This was Lefty at his most dangerous. He circled around, jumped here and there, but when he was on to something wrong, he wouldn’t let go. Now he was circling around the truth, which was something that could get Rocky or me killed if it wasn’t handled right.

“You put the guy there, Donnie. Now, who owns the joint?”

“I don’t know who owns it now, Left.”

“Donnie, who owned it before? Who’s Rocky working for? You brought the guy down. The guy didn’t know anybody in the fucking town. When I went there for a car, I had to check it out with Donnie. Donnie was the boss. The joint never left the hands. Now, Donnie, where do you take it from there? You can’t answer that question. It’s a serious thing. Where does this go, Donnie?”

“Left, I don’t know.”

“Think about it and don’t go to sleep. Go sit down and have a cup of coffee and call me back.”

I couldn’t talk to Rocky. I couldn’t talk to Sonny because I wasn’t supposed to know any of this was going on. I needed to pump Lefty for information. If we had been face-to-face, at least I could have been gauging his expressions, sensing him better. I couldn’t let any time go by. I called him back in a few minutes.

“Listen,” Lefty says, “I’m asking you a question. The man admitted you made $250,000. Why would he rat you out?”

“That’s because Mirra put the words in his mouth.”

“Could you prove it?”

“How am I gonna prove it? Because he’s probably scared of Mirra, that’s the only reason. I’m sure the guy is okay. But I don’t know why he would say, unless Mirra made him say it, that we cut up two hundred and fifty grand in junk money.”

“He’s a fucking stool-pigeon bastard. I won you and I’m gonna keep you. I says, ‘I go all the way and die with the kid.’ Ain’t nobody having you. I don’t like what Sonny did. He wants to compromise. He wants to give up Rocky for you. Sonny says, ‘We own Donnie and we’re giving up Rocky.’ ‘You give up my prick,’ I says. Then, when I blew my top, he says to hold off. ‘You don’t want him,’ he says. No, I don’t want Rocky, but he can’t have him. Mirra’s a fucking swindling bastard. He’s on the payroll out there, you know. He’s out there every day from eight to three in the afternoon. Just tell me about Rocky and make me feel happy and go to bed with a clear head. You’re not answering me, Donnie. Who put him there, Donnie?”

I hesitated, trying to think three questions ahead, how to slip out of this noose about my involvement with Rocky and the car business. “I just told you, he came up from Florida with me.”

“Donnie, don’t stutter to me. Ain’t the question. You was the boss there. He admitted that. Everybody in the neighborhood knew it. You was the boss.”

“So what’s the big deal?”

“Whose business was it? Why’d you give it up?”

“Were we making any money out there?”

“Wasn’t the question, that there. Who owns the company?”

“Left, I told you, it was a guy in California.”

“A guy opens up a motherfucking Corvette joint with all new cars, you don’t know his name.”

“Left, there were three cars there. They closed that joint. All they’re doing is running swag outa the back. Rocky told me—”

“Oh, come on. Swag to pay that kind of rent? What are you playing, games? Are you a fucking nitwit? The idea is, who put everybody there? Where’d it all stem from? Where’d youse meet? How come Rocky mentioned to Anthony Mirra about junk money and don’t mention the boat, the stool-pigeon boat, the FBI boat? How come Rocky don’t mention the federal boat? Take a guess who got him out of jail?”

“Who?”

“Go ahead, it’s a guess you got coming.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, you ain’t gonna believe it. Rocky got him out.”

“Rocky got Mirra out of jail? How?”

“I don’t know, through paperwork. You figure it out. Rocky got him out, and he’s paroled to them people out there. And he’s on the payroll out there. So you figure it out.”

I couldn’t figure it out. It was news to me. “That’s a good one.”

“It ain’t a good one. You got caught in the web. Donnie, you’re my friend. I trust you an awful lot. Many times I had doubts about you. You don’t understand the ins and outs of anything.”

“So what do we do now? We just let this guy bullshit and lie to everybody?”

“Ain’t the question. I didn’t want to scare you from coming in.”

“Hey, Left, I ain’t afraid of anybody.”

“You can’t help me out. I have to handle it without you.”

“I ain’t afraid of Mirra, either.”

Lefty gave a low chuckle. “Let me tell you something. Get off your fucking high horses and call me back later. You’re fucking aggravating me.”

“I’ll listen to you, go ahead.” Now I wanted to keep him on the phone. I didn’t want to risk losing contact, or letting him leave the house. I needed to know as much as possible, as soon as possible, about what was going on in the family and what I was facing.

“Donnie, what the fuck am I coming to Florida for? What am I, an impressionist? At least Jerry Chilli goes out there and has got fifty things going. He gets five grand a day. What have I got with you, Donnie? I got nothing but aggravation.”

Jerry Chilli was a made guy under Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicato, a captain in the opposition faction. Chilli was a New Yorker who did a lot of business in Miami.

“The gimmick is, while you’re laying lax, they got Rocky down with three witnesses, heavyweights. They scared him—you know, you put a gun to a guy’s head, right? You’re involved in a lot of heavyweights. I’m going right to the top with it. There’s a lot of feuds going on. It has to go to the guy in Lewisburg, understand?”

The guy in the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, federal penitentiary was Bonanno boss Rusty Rastelli. “Yeah.”

“Rusty will hear about it for one reason, because I made Joey Massino a witness. I made Mirra take water. I’m in trouble with the zips today because I defied them. And I’m gonna pay for it. Because of my friend Donnie sitting on his ass out in Miami—and don’t say different—about broads and shit like that, fine. Everybody likes to enjoy themselves. You’re young, but you got a lax habit. Big fucking man. You’re a big shit. You’re busy getting the wrinkles out of your stomach. You don’t even wanna work. Bookmaking ditto. You don’t wanna do nothing, Donnie. You wanna be a playboy. This is what you wanted it to come to?”

“Of course not.”

“You broke Tony in to that there. When I tell Tony I’m coming out, my plane ticket’s supposed to be paid like they always was. When Tony got lax and you got lax, you thought Sonny was more important that I am.”

“I never thought—”

“If you can’t admit, just keep your mouth shut. You think I’m easy? How come you walk a chalk line with Sonny Black but you don’t walk it with me? Get off your fucking ass. See, Donnie, I’m gonna say it once and ain’t gonna say it no more. You come at me a couple times. You don’t even realize when you come at me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You got one more strike with you. Not that I’m gonna hurt you. But I hold everything against. Like,

‘Get your own bag’ or something like that. When I walk in that town and I drop a suitcase, pick it up.“

“Okay. How does Sonny stand tonight?”

“He’s not giving you up, but he’s not on your side. In other words, anything happens, I take the weight. Why ain’t you blowing your top, why ain’t you mad at Rocky?”

“I am.” I was. I should never have brought Rocky in. I bent my rules to do a favor, because I didn’t know Rocky. Now it was haunting me and I wanted to strangle him.

“One guy’s gonna check both of youse out.”

“Hey, Left, you know they got no problem checking me out.”

“I don’t give a fuck. If you did something wrong in life, it’s for me to handle. Mirra cannot handle it. Sonny knows what he’s doing. See what you did by being lax? There’s no stopping here. The boss, the main guy in our family, had to sit down, and he can’t straighten it out. Donnie, you told me you put Rocky there, and these things are gonna come out. You got anything fucking hidden?”