How to Ruin a First Meeting
The first time the Don took me along, it was to lunch with the owner of a new restaurant by the port. The man was wondering whether to take his oil from us. Between the soup and the fish I asked how much he still owed his previous supplier. A businesslike question, a clever one, and I was proud of it. The owner answered briefly and politely. Under the table, the Don stepped on my foot.
In the car he explained. “You asked a man about his debts. At his own table, an hour after you met him. Now he thinks we came to count his money.” The Don went to the next lunch alone and talked about the owner’s daughter, who was getting married. Nobody mentioned oil for another week.
Rudeness is forgiven faster. At least rudeness is understandable. A question too many leaves a man feeling he’s being weighed.
“What Are You, a Cop?”
Tony Conte, an FBI agent working in Milwaukee under a false name, was taken out to dinner at a restaurant with Frank Balistrieri, the local boss. The dinner went well. Afterwards Lefty tore into Conte. It turned out Conte had asked one of the guests at the table where he was from. In Pistone’s account, Lefty’s lecture went something like this: never ask people where they’re from, what business is it of yours, what are you, a cop? Lefty admitted he’d nearly died of fright. Lucky Balistrieri hadn’t heard. Otherwise he might have turned round and asked what right Conte had to be questioning his friends.
In a bar, everyone asks that question. At that table it sounded like an interrogation. Conte didn’t make excuses. He said he understood, he’d know better, it wouldn’t happen again. And Lefty softened at once. The mistake was fixed with one sentence, because Conte didn’t defend it.
The Wrong Key for This Door
People like talking about themselves. In 2012 Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell at Harvard tested it with money. People agreed to be paid less just to talk about themselves rather than about someone else. That’s why a personal question usually opens a man up.
Usually. Tony Mirra, Pistone writes, never got close to anyone. Of his family he kept in touch only with his mother, and he didn’t talk about personal things. Ask him one day how his mother was doing and he’d say fine. Ask him the next day and he’d tell you, rudely, where to put your interest.
The same question that opens one man locks up another. Find the key to the man, not to people in general. If the door won’t give, don’t keep rattling it. From the outside, that looks like a break-in.
The Man Who Can’t Hear No
In Miami, at Sammy’s bar, a drunk small-time hood from New York latched on to Pistone. He yelled that he knew him, grabbed his arm, demanded to know whose crew he was with. Those, Pistone writes, are questions that proper wiseguys don’t ask each other. Pistone asked the drunk’s friends to calm him down. They shrugged. So he called the bartender over and told him to be a witness if the guy didn’t shut up. When the drunk grabbed his shoulder, Pistone hit first. Fitz, another agent, put two of the friends on the floor. The bartender immediately confirmed he’d seen and heard everything. The kid turned out to be with the Lucchese family. The quarrel was quickly smoothed over, and Donnie’s reputation only grew.
As far back as 1966 the psychologist Jack Brehm described psychological reactance. When people are pushed, they defend their freedom, even at their own expense. The pushy man loses twice. He doesn’t get his answer, and he hands the man he’s pushing the right to look like the one in the right.
The Smirk
A young cook once asked me whether oil went off in winter in an unheated storeroom. I smirked. My answer was correct, but I smirked. He didn’t come to the November evening for young cooks that year or the next. The Don noticed before I did. “He forgot the answer by evening. He won’t forget the smirk.”
The psychologist John Gottman spent years filming married couples. The most reliable predictor of divorce turned out to be not the rows but contempt: the sneer, the rolled eyes. Contempt is quiet. You hear it all the same.
Someone Else’s Slip
Pistone rarely saw his family, and once he took his wife to a flea market where Vinnie, a fence he knew, sold stolen goods. The risk, he decided, was worth it. His wife was delighted, and in front of Vinnie she called her husband by his real name. Vinnie didn’t seem to notice. And even if he had, Pistone reasoned afterwards, it was no great disaster: he could introduce himself to his girlfriends by any name he liked.
A first meeting can be ruined by someone else’s tongue too. Your wife, your assistant, your driver know more about you than the other man needs to. Warn them in advance. And keep a simple explanation handy, one that sounds like the truth.
The Bottom Line
Before you ask, think how your question will sound at this table. If you got it wrong, admit it in one sentence and don’t defend it. And leave personal matters to the man who brings them up himself.
There’s a flip side. Someone asks you about things it’s too early for, grabs your arm, won’t hear a refusal. That isn’t warmth. That’s a test, or pressure. Do what Pistone did: say calmly where the line is, and make sure there’s a witness nearby.