The Good Guys

by Bill Bonanno, Joe Pistone, David Fisher

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Suspense

Synopsis

* Chain-smoking Mickey Fists isn't sure if he's an "addict" or an "attic." * The Freemont Avenue Social Club is on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy. So are the best wiretaps FBI money can buy. * Skinny Al weighed 320 pounds and lived life to the fullest...until someone burned out his eardrums and shot his body full of holes. Hundreds of writers have tried to capture life inside the mob, but no one has ever had the inside access to write a book like this one. Drawing on the firsthand experience of former undercover FBI agent Joe Pistone-aka Donnie Brasco-as well as former Mafia prince Bill Bonanno, The Good Guys straddles both sides of the law, races relentlessly through the New York City underworld, and crackles with characters and moments so vivid they will never let you go. At Columbia University, a professor of Russian literature has gone missing. A few miles and light-years away, Little Eddie LaRocca and Bobby San Filippo are on the move-dealing in everything from hot-sheet hotels to bootleg Fuji film. When the hoods are sent to find the professor, they find out that someone else is looking, too. Beautiful FBI agent Laura Russo is making her preppy partner's head spin. She knows the missing man is important-and somehow connected to a recent mob hit. While Eddie and Bobby are fighting their way through ugly deeds and pretty coeds, these feds will cook up some business of their own, turning a little disagreement among criminals into an all-out war... Capturing the organized crime world of the go-go '80s, Pistone and Bonanno's one-of-a-kind collaboration is bad to the bone-and as marvelously authentic as it gets.

Release date: January 1, 2005

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 368

Sample

ONE

Fuck that no-good motherfucking fucker, Tony,” Little Eddie said, his face turning almost the color of the cherry Danish on his plate. “I ain’t kidding this time. I swear to God, I see that fucking guy come around here again, I’m gonna fucking rip out his heart and stuff it down his throat till he’s shitting it out. I’m fucking pissed off.”

“Listen to me, kid,” Tony Cupcakes said calmly. “You can’t hold back like that. You got something to say, you gotta say it right out loud. Holding your feelings inside like that, it ain’t good for you.”

Everybody laughed, even Little Eddie. This conversation was taking place on a crisp September afternoon in 1985, inside the Freemont Avenue Social Club, which naturally was on Elizabeth Street in New York’s Little Italy. The truth is that I grew up in social clubs just like this one. For made members and associates of our organization, the social club is the center of the universe. Years ago the social clubs were very important places in the neighborhoods. Almost sacred. This was the place people would come for help. If they needed three dollars so their child could visit a doctor, they could get it at the social club. If they needed a job or were having problems with the landlord, they would go to the social club to ask for assistance. And they would be welcomed there.

But as the neighborhoods changed, so did the function of the social club. It became the place where people in my business would hang out while waiting for the next deal; it became the office, our home away from home, the place for real men to be together. Everything in life that mattered started there. If the great poet Robert Frost had known the people in my life, he might have written that the social club is that place that when you go there, if you’re a friend of ours, they have to take you in.

Then they would probably offer you some cannoli.

My father, Joe Bonanno, the man who served as the model for The Godfather, operated out of two clubs, the Rex Spinola Democratic Club in Brooklyn and the Shoreview Social Club in Manhattan. The Rex Spinola Club was for our neighborhood. It had a large meeting hall in the front and several private rooms in the back. One or two days every week the local people would line up to meet with my father in a back room. They believed that he was a great man who was concerned about their problems and had the power to help them. And mostly they were right.

The Shoreview Social Club was on East 12th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A. It was a long way from the nearest shore, and the only view through the front windows was of the tenements across the street. My father brought me there for the first time when I was six years old. But I remember it very well; I remember the feeling of being someplace very special. From the first day I was there everything about it felt comfortable. Being my father’s son meant that people were always bringing me small gifts as a way of showing their respect for him. So for me the social club meant candy, ice cream, and small toys. It was heaven.

It was there that I began to understand the importance of relationships among good people, that I began to realize how few things really matter in life.

I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent inside social clubs since then, but that feeling never went away. And I’ve learned that after a while all social clubs seem to be pretty much the same. The same things matter. Wherever the club is located, whatever crew hangs out there, the cappuccino tastes the same, the shafts of cold sunlight slant through the windows in the late afternoon the same way, the same Sinatra and Vic Damone music is playing on the radio, and the scent of loyalty, friendship, and money is always in the air.

As the function of the social club evolved, the most important requirement became that it not attract unwanted attention. Which meant just about any attention. In fact, after John Gotti went to prison, due at least in part to his insatiable love of publicity, the family closed down all its social clubs and operated mostly out of restaurants and back rooms. Not that it made any difference in terms of business. The Freemont Avenue Social Club, which was located in the former King Television and Radio repair shop, satisfied the primary requirement. From the outside it looked about as inviting as a federal prison. People who lived on the block and the people who had business there knew exactly what it was. Everybody else in the world didn’t matter.

Directly in front of the Shoreview was a fire hydrant that didn’t appear on any city maps and was not connected to any water supply. Like the plugs in front of several Park Avenue buildings, it just appeared magically in place one night. Its only actual function was to guarantee that there would always be a parking spot available for Henry Franzone, the captain, or capo, of the Freemont Avenue crew. Two large bay windows on either side of the recessed front door were covered from the inside with sheets of faded white plasterboard from the bottom to about three feet from the top. The brown steel door had a fan window near the top that had been cloaked with colored plastic that was supposed to look like stained glass but served to make it impossible to see inside. Directly above the steel door a wheezing air conditioner was framed by unpainted plywood. This air conditioner leaked, so on hot days people who belonged to the club knew to squeeze left when they came inside. Next to the door was a buzzer rather than a bell, and in the name slot above the black button someone with a sense of humor had slipped in a piece of paper on which was written, in faded black ink, “J. E. Hoover.”

The Freemont Avenue Social Club was never closed. What was going on inside was the life. The good and the bad of it. It didn’t matter what time it was, almost always you could find several men eating and talking and drinking cappuccino and playing cards or dominoes and laughing and complaining and planning. Always planning. The next job, the next scam, the next split. In the end, whatever was going on, it was always about money. Someone told me once that the quality of a social club could be measured by the availability of food and the quality of the complaints. By that standard the Shoreview was a good place to belong. Food first, though.

On this fall afternoon Little Eddie LaRocca was griping about a street hustler they knew as Benny Rags. This was a guy who was always coming around with something to sell. Stuff that fell off the back of a truck, from cheap watches to ladies’ shoes. Little Eddie was little in nickname only. He was a big, fat, tough guy. He was Little Eddie only because he was Big Eddie’s younger brother; physically he was much bigger than Big Eddie. But Big Eddie had started bringing him around when he was a kid and he made some friends and proved he could earn and eventually was invited to become an associate of Franzone’s crew. Nobody ever knew Little Eddie’s exact weight, but it had to be two seventy, two eighty, and the guy wasn’t quite six feet tall. But even carrying all that weight he moved quick when he had to, even gracefully.

Little Eddie was a matter-of-fact guy. What is, is. What isn’t, wasn’t his business. Once there had been a lot of people like him around, people who believed without reservation in the family. Men who found great comfort in structure and predictability. Good soldiers. It used to be a joke that in some crews you were allowed to do anything you wanted to do. First the capo told you what you wanted to do, then you did it.

In fact, some clubs were run pretty tough; for example, you weren’t allowed to change the station on the radio unless you had permission. But Freemont Avenue wasn’t one of those places. The club belonged to Henry Franzone, who ran things pretty loose. As long as his people kept earning, and as long as he got his piece of every deal, his crew had a lot of independence. But when the bosses needed something done, it got done first. Everything else was tied for second.

The thing that was pissing off Little Eddie were the Banlon shirts he’d gotten from Benny Rags. “You wear the fucking things one time, the threads start coming out. Makes me look like shit.”

From across the room Georgie One-Time asked, without looking up from the cards in his hand, “How much you pay him for those shirts?”

Everybody knew that Little Eddie never paid Benny Rags for anything. “That ain’t the point,” Little Eddie said. “You don’t embarrass me by letting me wear this shit. What if somebody sees me?”

Fast Lenny said casually, “Hey, don’t worry about it, Eddie. I see you. And you look okay to me. Honest. Well, except maybe for that thing what’s hanging over your belt there, what do you call that?”

Tony Cupcakes answered, “Holy shit! You mean you got a name for that thing?” And again everybody laughed—except the Duke, who just went about his job, cleaning and serving. Duke was the aging deaf-mute who had done all the cleaning and most of the cooking in the club for the past quarter century. No one even knew if he had a last name. Or where he came from. Everybody just assumed he was Italian. He’d been “the Duke” for all that time, named in honor of Duke Wayne by the late Frankie “Fat Fingers” Ianiello after he’d seen Wayne playing The Quiet Man on TV. “Ain’t nobody quieter than that guy,” he’d supposedly said in bestowing the nickname.

Duke had been the perfect choice to take care of the club. He lived in the back, sleeping in a windowless converted storeroom, and left the place only to shop and occasionally visit a sister in Rego Park. Apparently his sister really was a Sister, Sister Mary Rose or something like that, which once caused Fast Lenny to wonder, “If the Duke could talk and his sister came around, would he introduce her as his sister Sister?” Because Duke lived in the club, nobody could come in without him knowing about it. No FBI, no cops, no DEA, no nobody. And because he was deaf and dumb, people could talk around him without worrying that something they said would be repeated. They used to tell a story about an old-timer named Danny Boo-Boo, who objected to the Duke being called deaf and dumb, pointing out that “Just because the guy can’t say nothing don’t mean he’s dumb. Who the fuck knows how smart he is if he can’t tell you?”

Following Little Eddie’s Banlon shirt eruption, Duke was the topic of conversation. Fast Lenny wondered aloud if foreigners spoke some kind of foreign sign language. “Like, I mean, you know in English that a chair is called a chair, but in French it ain’t a chair. It’s a whatever the fuck it is. So if Duke were speaking to a French guy who couldn’t speak too, how would he tell a French guy what was a chair if he needed to?”

“He could just point to it,” Georgie One-Time suggested.

“No fucking shit,” Fast Lenny snapped. “I know that. But all I’m saying is that if people from wherever the fuck they come from can’t talk, do they all have the same signs? How hard a question is that to understand?”

Nobody knew the answer. Little Eddie started to suggest that they ask the Duke, then remembered why the conversation had started in the first place.

Right in the middle of this conversation Bobby San Filippo, or Bobby Blue Eyes, or Bobby Hats, as different people knew him, silently slipped in smooth as a Sinatra song. Even this early in the afternoon he was handsomely dressed in a tailored Kasper business-gray suit, a Burberry overcoat, and an Elite gray fedora with a black silk band, all from Brooks Brothers. This dressing expensive was a new thing in the organization. In the old days everybody dressed neatly, but nobody wore designer clothes. And while some people might have worn hats, that had gone out a long time ago. In those days people just didn’t do anything that would attract attention. There was no future in it. But some of the up-and-comers, the John Gottis and Bobby Blue Eyes, had started dressing to kill. So to speak.

As Bobby walked toward the card table in the back of the club, he caught Duke’s eye, squeezed his thumb and forefinger together, and tipped them to his lips. Duke nodded. Then Bobby turned up the volume on the radio sitting on top of the refrigerator and joined the group at the table. One of the many things people liked about Bobby was that he always acted like one of the guys, while everybody knew he was going to the top. There was no big shot inside Bobby Blue Eyes. The Duke placed a cup of cappuccino in front of him. “There’s the man,” Little Eddie said, then without even a slight pause changed the subject completely. “So, Bobby, who’s this fucking guy we’re supposed to find?”

Bobby shook his head slowly, as if wondering what he was going to do with this cafone. “What do I look like—Mr. Jeopardy? How the fuck do I know? He’s the guy that Franzone told me to find. What else do we need to know?” Bobby San Filippo was clever in every area in which it was necessary to be clever. But even more important, he had an understanding of history. He was third-generation, and although he’d graduated from the University of Miami, at thirty-four years old he’d already risen higher in the ranks than either his father or his grandfather. Both of them had been reliable earners and stand-up guys, although neither of them had ever been made. His grandfather died of the Big C with a smile on his face after the Miracle Mets won the World Series in 1969. Five years later his father left his house in Rego Park one night and they’re still waiting for him to come home.

“No disrespect, Bobby,” Little Eddie continued, “but how we gonna find this guy if we don’t know nothing about him? You can’t find nobody if you don’t know his right name, know what I mean? It don’t make no sense. Like, if you don’t know his name, how you gonna know when you found him? Maybe you find somebody else and think it’s him. I mean, that’s a pretty tough thing to ask a person, am I right or am I right?”

Bobby was always diplomatic. “Well, you know, Eddie, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do without asking too many smart questions. And we know he’s a teacher and we know where he teaches and what he teaches. I mean, that’s a pretty good start right there. We’ll go talk to some people, that’s all. We find him, we find him.” Bobby would never admit it out loud, but he was a little puzzled by this one himself. Usually the job was explained pretty carefully: Meet with this guy and do this, go there and do that. Pick up a payment for a carload of cigarettes, find a buyer for thirty thousand rolls of Fuji film, see this dentist and remind him to pay his debts—the work of everyday life.

But this was different. All Franzone had told Bobby was that the boss of another crew, Tony Cosentino from over on Bath Street, needed to find a man real quick. And that the job took precedence over everything else. Actually it wasn’t all that unusual. In the organization people did favors for people all the time. And often without knowing why it was being done. Once many years ago, when I was active, I was told to fly from New York to Florida, go to a certain restaurant and eat dinner. That was it, eat dinner at this restaurant. Then I could return to the city. I didn’t ask, I ate. It was steak and potatoes and no questions.

Much later I found out that some people had been having problems with some other people, and they needed to show off their bona fides. They needed to prove that they had reach. Getting Joe Bonanno’s son to show up for dinner was a demonstration of power. My presence alone solved their problem.

Back then life within organized crime was pretty simple. What mattered was loyalty first, and earning money tied for first. But you couldn’t have one without the other; they were tied together. People did what they were told to do for the good of the family. It was like the Musketeers: one for all, all for one. That started changing when the people who had been in control for decades, people like my father, got old and had to step aside or were pushed. Then the lines got a little blurred, and the thing that mattered was loyalty to money. This search for a teacher with no name took place in New York right about the time things were beginning to change. On the surface, though, the waters still looked calm. So when a man like Bobby Blue Eyes was told by his captain to do something, he did it without asking questions.

In this particular situation Tony Cosentino had asked Henry Franzone to help find a guy known around as the professor. Or Professor G. Somebody had to know his full name and who he was—otherwise he would never have been permitted to hang around—but the people who knew didn’t tell it to anybody. In this world last names don’t matter. People can know each other for years without knowing each other’s last name. Unless, of course, your last name is something like, say, Bonanno. Or Genovese. Then people know it and respect it. But the professor was just “the professor.” About all Bobby was told was that the professor really was a professor and that he taught Russian at Columbia University. A college professor. That was it, that was what they knew. If anybody knew where he lived or what he looked like or if he bet the horses or shot smack or anything at all, nobody was talking.

“The Professor” is a pretty common tag, although the one thing every “the Professor” had in common was that none of them were actually professors. It was a nickname usually given to people who thought they were smart guys. People who acted like they had all the answers, sometimes even when nobody asked the questions.

When all this took place, I was already retired from the family business, but I still had friends. So I know this story from the people who know the people. The people who were there.

I have to admit that when I first heard about this search, I got very curious. I wondered why it was so important to some connected people that this college professor get found. The professor wasn’t a made man, he wasn’t an associate, he wasn’t even really connected. What was known was that he had gotten himself involved with Tony Cosentino and for whatever reasons he needed to be found. There wasn’t necessarily anything ominous about it. He just needed to be talked to and apparently was making himself hard to find. One thing for absolute certain in this business: The less somebody wants to have a conversation, the more important that conversation usually is.

Little Eddie sighed. “This is bullshit. Who got time for this?” Without turning his head to get Duke’s attention he said, “Duke, give me some more coffee, please.”

Duke continued washing the dishes, oblivious to Little Eddie’s request. Georgie laughed loud and deep. “It ain’t ever gonna work, Eddie. The guy can’t hear you.”

Little Eddie had never trusted the Duke and was always laying traps for him. The day the Duke responded, proving he really could hear, would be his last day on earth. Eddie stamped his foot on the floor a couple of times; Duke picked up the vibration and turned around. Eddie practically yelled, “Gimme coffee, you fucking prick.”

“Caw-fee,” the Duke agreed.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Little Eddie replied, “cawfee. But the prick part, that he don’t hear.” He shook his head in disbelief, then turned to Bobby. “So where do we start with this thing?”

Bobby Blue Eyes and Little Eddie weren’t exactly partners—the family didn’t work that way—but they had done a lot of things together and had become close friends. Eddie knew Bobby was a mover and had decided a long time ago to swim along in his wake. So unless Bobby told him different, Eddie just assumed he’d be helping him out on this job. “I don’t know. I guess we go up to Columbia and see what’s going on.”

Georgie laughed out loud. “Jesus H. Christ, that’s all the world needs. Little Eddie goes to college. That’s like me sending my wife to cooking school.”

“Yeah,” Little Eddie agreed enthusiastically. “If my mother heard I was going to college, she’d have a cow.”

“Eddie,” Bobby said matter-of-factly, indicating Eddie’s huge frame, “I think she already did.”

Everybody laughed again. That was the kind of insult that only someone like Bobby could get away with, because everybody knew he wasn’t serious. “What are you talking?” Eddie responded. “You saying that diet book I’m following ain’t working? Fuck you, I lost about two pounds yesterday.”

Mickey Fists walked in just in time to hear Eddie make that claim. “Yeah, sure you did,” he said.

“I did,” Little Eddie insisted, “swear to fucking God.” And added with perfect timing, “I threw away that fucking diet book.”

Fast Lenny tossed down his cards in frustration. “Fuck this shit. You guys wanna play some cards or you wanna be fucking comedians? I’m dying here and it ain’t that funny to me.”

“Yeah, me too, I’m out,” Tony Cupcakes said.

“Hey, Eddie,” Bobby asked, “what do you say, you ready to go up to Columbia? Let’s see what this thing is all about.”

“Columbia?” Mickey Fists said. “I thought that was a fucking country.”

Bobby explained, “Yeah, well, it is, but I’m talking about the college. Up in Harlem.”

Mickey paused in front of the refrigerator and turned down the radio. “What’s going on up there?” Mickey had been made more than two decades earlier. He was a man who commanded great respect, so when he asked a question, it got answered.

“The Hammer wants me to find some guy, a professor. He worked up there. We’re just gonna go ask some questions.”

Eddie stood up. “College broads, right? You kidding me? Boola fucking boola.”

“Anybody else wanna take a ride?” Bobby was being polite. He knew that nobody was going to get involved in a job that didn’t have the possibility of money at the end.

It definitely didn’t occur to anybody that this might turn out to be something important. It wasn’t that kind of job. It was just another favor being done in a business that functioned on favors being done. The way it worked was simple: You do this for me, then when you need something done, come and see me. It worked the same way whether it was an immigrant who needed three bucks to see a doctor or a boss who needed a missing college professor found.

What mattered was that it didn’t interfere with the important business. And the important business was anything that earned a profit. The world of organized crime as portrayed in the books and the movies since The Godfather isn’t entirely accurate. For most people working in this world, it isn’t particularly glamorous, it isn’t that exciting. It’s a job. It’s a hard job. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on every member of the organization to earn a living. Nobody gets paid a weekly salary. There’s no health plan. You are what you earned last week.

The organization in organized crime is structured like a pyramid, meaning that a percentage of every penny earned by people at the bottom finds its way to people at the top. In essence that might be considered a franchise fee, because it is the existence of this vast support group that in many cases enables individuals to earn their living. People who otherwise probably wouldn’t pay too much attention to a certain individual are careful to pay him the respect he has earned when they find out he’s a member of this organization. It isn’t about him, it’s the people standing behind him.

Most soldiers in this world, people like Bobby Blue Eyes and Little Eddie, spend their days and nights looking for the next score, the big opportunity. At any time a soldier will have several deals in the works. Some of them he’ll initiate himself, some will be brought to him by people needing the power and prestige he brings to a situation, and some will come from other members of the crew paying him a piece for doing some work. The range of opportunities is endless and indescribable. It’s anything where there is the chance for money at the other end.

Bobby and Little Eddie took the West Side Highway uptown, although calling that particular traffic jam a highway was like calling John Gotti shy. At that time the road below 57th Street was a pothole-marred mess. The raised portion of the highway had been closed to traffic, but much of it hadn’t been taken down yet, so big chunks of concrete still occasionally fell off onto the street. Personal-injury lawyers used to send people driving under it and then pray. But Bobby took the highway because he had a couple of stops he needed to make. When he got off the road on West Street, Little Eddie asked, “Where you going now?”

Bobby was one of those people who smile with their mouth closed. “Hell,” he said.

“Right,” Eddie said, “you’re a regular fucking comedian.”

“I’m not kidding you, Eddie,” he said, “this is for real. I got a little piece of hell.” About ten minutes later he parked in front of a seedy four-story building. Obviously to fit the property on which it had been built, rather than being rectangular, this building was constructed in the shape of a ship, with one square end and the other end of the building tapering to a point. The street floor was constructed of cement, which appropriately had been painted a battleship gray, while the upper stories were brick. A vertical neon sign affixed to one of the square corners identified the building as the Terminal Hotel. The Terminal was working its way down from fleabag. It was one of those short-stay places—two-hour minimum—a hot-sheet hotel, a place for street hookers to take their johns so they didn’t have to work in cars or alleys. The only thing different about this place was that it was primarily for homosexuals.

There were two doors. A glass door with the hotel’s name in an arc of gold lettering opened onto the lobby, but Bobby and Eddie went down a flight of steps and through the open second door, a windowless red steel door with no name or identification of any kind on it.

The door opened onto another world. The place was very dimly lit, the walls were painted either a deep red or black. As they walked in, Eddie said, “Gees, Bobby, this is a nice cheery place.”

Sex has always been good business for organized crime. Nobody had any problems with it. There was a lot of money to be made in passion pits, and nobody was getting hurt, so what was wrong with it? Hurt? This was the business of providing pleasure. The mob, the Mafia, Cosa Nostra, call it whatever you want, has always been a service organization. We made available to people those things they desired but couldn’t get legally, everything from playing a daily number to kinky sex. Little Eddie knew his way around this world. One of his first jobs—literally while he was still in high school—was working nights as a bouncer at Mello’s on Seventh Avenue, an expensive strip club that catered to Garment District executives and their expense accounts. Through the years Little Eddie had seen a lot of interesting things in sex clubs and hooker havens—like he’d never forget the bachelor party in which the groom had been rushed to the hospital gasping for breath after being nearly smothered by a pair of 44 triple Ds—but almost all of it was the typical red-blooded American stuff. Tits and ass. But as he looked around Hell, he realized he was seeing things he had never seen before. “Jesus,” he said disgustedly, “what kind of sick place is this?”

Even in the middle of the afternoon the place was busy. Many of the men in the club were dressed in black leather pants, and most of them had the crotch cut out. Eddie concentrated on keeping his eyes looking straight ahead at shoulder level and above. He wasn’t embarrassed, exactly, but he knew there was something fundamentally wrong with men who wanted to be with men rather than women. When a man whose shaved head reflected the blue bulb hanging from the ceiling walked past, Eddie just couldn’t help noticing that the guy wasn’t wearing anything under his black leather chaps, his not-so-privates hanging right out there in public. As the man passed him, Eddie involuntarily reached up and tightened the knot on his tie. That was his way of reassuring himself that he was still completely dressed.

In one dark corner two men were having oral sex—they were actually doing it in public—and worse, one of them was dressed as a nun. “Ah, Bobby, this ain’t right,” Eddie said, following San Filippo through the quiet kitchen to a room way in the back. And as he did, he thought to himself, I don’t care if I’m gonna bust a motherfucking gut, no fucking way am I going into the men’s room.

Bobby knocked on a door marked “Private,” and after being identified, he and Eddie were buzzed inside. A squat man with perfectly combed white hair was sitting behind a small wooden desk. Eddie took his post at the door and folded his arms on his chest, the traditional “don’t fuck with me” pose. Bobby shook hands with the white-haired man but did not introduce Eddie. That was one way of making his point that this was not a social visit. “Hey, Bobby,” the man said with obviously false enthusiasm, “I got it ready for you right here.” He reached into the top drawer of the file cabinet supporting the desk and pulled out an envelope.

“What do you got for me?” Bobby asked, taking the envelope.

“Twenty-two,” he said s