Politics

In July 1979 Pistone was in Miami when Lefty called. As Pistone tells it, Lefty told him to run out and get the New York papers, because something big had happened.

Carmine Galante had been killed, head of the Bonanno family, the very man Pistone and Lefty had guarded at the door of the Casa Bella, not daring to go in. Galante had been out of prison only a few months. Three unknown men shot him over lunch in the back yard of a small restaurant, Joe and Mary’s, on Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn. In the newspaper photograph he lay on his back, a cigar still clamped in his teeth. The restaurant owner and a friend of his were killed too. And the two bodyguards who had been having lunch with Galante simply walked away after the attack.

Pistone called Lefty back and, by his own account, could only swear in amazement. Lefty said big changes were coming. And what were the two of them supposed to do? Not on the phone, Lefty said. Come up.

A few days later Lefty told him how it had all gone for him. Right after the killing Sonny Black called him and summoned him to a night meeting at his bar in Brooklyn. He forbade him to tell anyone. Lefty had worked for years for Captain Sabella, who was on the other side. Lefty, in Pistone’s retelling, admitted his first thought was that they were going to whack him: he’d been ordered to show up and told to keep his mouth shut, but he had no choice. The meeting, as it turned out, went off in a friendly atmosphere. Sonny laid out how things stood: who had been killed, who had been moved up. One man became a captain. Another, young and cunning, the very one who had been having lunch with Galante and walked away, also became a captain—at twenty-eight, the youngest in the family. Sabella and his number two were supposed to be killed, but a whole lot of people spoke up for them, and they were simply busted down to soldiers. And Lefty was given a choice of whom to work for. Sonny wanted Lefty to stay with him. And Lefty, so he said, told Sonny he was with him.

Change Comes Without Warning

That’s the first thing to know about politics in any organisation: change isn’t announced in advance. Yesterday Galante was the head of the family, guarded out in the street. Today he’s on the front page with a cigar in his teeth. Yesterday Sabella was a captain; today he’s a soldier. Yesterday two men were bodyguards; today one of them is a captain.

Pistone explains the rule by which all this happened. If one coalition got permission from the Commission to remove a boss, all the dead man’s supporters were obliged to go over to its side. Otherwise a purge began, which could last for years, until one side won outright.

In the office nobody gets killed, but change comes the same way. A new director is appointed on a Friday evening, a department is broken up over the weekend, and on Monday yesterday’s favourite of the bosses learns that his job no longer exists. And it almost always turns out that someone knew in advance. Those who knew were ready. The rest read about it in the papers.

Hence the rule: be ready for change always, not when it’s announced. Don’t tie your fate entirely to one man at the top: he may go, and you’ll go with him. Have relationships on different floors and in different groups. And when the change has come, don’t flap about. Lefty didn’t know how the night meeting would end, but he went, listened and made his choice. Flapping about at a moment like that shows more than any mistake.

Business Is Done Face to Face

The second rule: real decisions are made not at meetings but in one-on-one conversations. Not in the office, but in a bar, in a car, on a walk.

Look at how Sonny put his crew together after Galante was killed. He didn’t call a general meeting. He phoned Lefty personally, summoned him to his place at night, forbade him to talk. He spoke to him one on one, laid out how things stood and offered him a choice. That’s how you lure people away from someone else’s crew. That’s how you win loyalty at the moment a man is expecting the worst and gets an offer instead.

Two years later, in the spring of 1981, Sonny ran another operation of the same kind. Pistone learned about it over the phone. Lefty called him in Florida and talked in code, telling him, as Pistone recalls it, not to say anything stupid now, just to imagine what had happened: everybody was under them now. Pistone says he pictured three captains from the hostile faction being killed. And later Sonny himself told how, on the day of those killings, he had kept Tony Mirra’s uncle, Al Walker, at his bar under the eye of two heavies. The day before, Mirra had announced that he was staying on the other side. In Sonny’s telling, when the uncle heard the news he went white, sure they were going to whack him too; but Sonny just had a talk with him about Tony—explained that Tony wasn’t behaving right and had better get his head straight. The uncle promised his nephew would mend his ways.

I’m not giving you this as a model—I don’t recommend Sonny’s methods. I’m giving it to you as a mechanism. Sonny knew who was related to whom, and he made use of it. He didn’t go at Mirra head-on; he went through the uncle, at the very minute the uncle was most ready to listen.

Who’s Related to Whom, Who Owes Whom

The third rule: know who’s connected to whom. Not by the organisation chart, but by life. Who’s whose relative, who went to school with whom, who owes whom his career, who owes whom money or a favour. This invisible chart determines how decisions are really made far more accurately than the one hanging on the wall.

The Sicilian Corleonesi built their whole victory on this knowledge. Dickie writes that for years they quietly recruited people inside other families, behind their bosses’ backs. When Totò Riina kidnapped and killed the father-in-law of one of the Salvo cousins, neither the Salvos nor their patron Bontate, for all their connections and wealth, could even get the body back to bury. Riina denied any involvement and, as Buscetta later put it, lied to their faces. Other mafiosi, noticing not only Riina’s audacity but also his opponents’ helplessness, drew their conclusions about whose side to take. In 1977 the Corleonesi expelled Tano Badalamenti, who had at one time headed the Commission, from Cosa Nostra, on a charge of pocketing drug money behind the others’ backs. Riina chose his men, according to one turncoat, so that they could smile always and everywhere, even in the middle of an earthquake.

And half a century earlier the invisible chart had saved Morello’s life. When in 1920 the “boss of bosses” D’Aquila sentenced him and his allies to death, all three of them, as Dash writes, doubtless thanks to friends on the council, learned of the sentence before it could be carried out, and fled the country on a ship from a small port in Virginia. One man at the meeting who knew who was whose friend decided the fate of three.

You Don’t Ask Too Many Questions

One last thing. In politics, what you don’t ask is as important as what you know.

Pistone writes that after Galante was killed he didn’t ask around about who had killed the boss. In that world you take an interest only in what concerns you directly. Ordinary human curiosity is a bad quality in a good fellow. Too many questions draw too much attention. He didn’t even try to find out the details through FBI informants: if the police sniffed something out, everyone would start looking for the rat, and the first one they’d remember would be the man who asked a lot of questions.

In the office, the one who asks most about the rumours is the first suspect when a rumour gets out. Know what you need to know. Listen more than you ask. The rest will come by itself, if you stand at the door long enough.

The Bottom Line

Don’t tie your fate to one man at the top. And when they call you in at night to see the new boss and ask you not to tell anyone, go. Most likely you’ll be offered a choice. It’s worse if they don’t call you at all.