One of Us
For the whole of 1977 Lefty never told Pistone his surname. Nor, naturally, did Pistone tell Lefty his. One was Lefty or Benny, the other was Donnie. And all the while Donnie was having dinner at Lefty and Louise’s, watching television with them in the evenings and sometimes falling asleep on their sofa.
The surname came out by chance. In passing. They were checking into a hotel together for the first time, and Lefty asked what name to put him down under. Only then, Pistone writes, did his surname get said out loud: Brasco. Lefty gave his the same way, on business, when Donnie was signing him in somewhere. Pistone’s explanation is short: if you don’t offer your surname, nobody asks; that’s the rule.
A man gets let onto the sofa before they know his surname. You don’t become one of us by filling in a form.
How It Started
Two years earlier, in Florida, Pistone first sat down across from Marshall. A car mechanic and car thief whom the FBI had signed up as an informant. The two of them were going to be running stolen cars together and risking their necks.
Pistone opened with the thing people usually don’t say. He said he didn’t know how to steal a car. Marshall snorted that this was no problem at all, and that he’d teach him in no time. Then they talked about their wives, about work, about this and that. Marshall admitted he’d thought all agents were office rats. And then he gave his verdict, as Pistone tells it: Pistone was a good guy, he’d pass for one of them, they could work together.
The start wasn’t strength or heroics. It was admitting you can’t do something, and a chat about wives. A man who shows all his trumps at once makes you want to check whether the deck is marked.
A Table for Two
In 1990 the psychologists Linda Tickle-Degnen and Robert Rosenthal took this feeling apart into three pieces. Attention: the person is all there. Warmth: they’re glad to see you. And coordination: two people fall into step, like two removal men carrying one table. Take away one leg and the table slides.
The Don’s definition was shorter. “One of us is the man you don’t have to count your change with.”
Three Years for One Hotel
The biggest hotel on our stretch of coast took the Don three years. The first year he offered nothing. Once a month he dropped off a bottle of oil for the cook and said hello to the manager. In the second year he took on something small: washing the banquet tablecloths that their own laundry didn’t have the hands for. We did the work so that there was nothing to fault. In the third year the manager rang himself and asked whether we’d take the lot.
I asked the Don whether he didn’t begrudge those three years. He was surprised. “I didn’t lose three years. I spent three years buying the right to ask.”
A Christmas Tree in a Jug
Being one of us is also an obligation. You can see it in one Christmas Eve of Pistone’s. Funny and sad.
In December 1976 he was planning to go home to his family. But he spent the whole day sitting with Albert, a small-time man in the Colombo family, and his crowd. Late in the evening, driving past a man selling Christmas trees, he let slip that he didn’t even have a tree. Albert yelled at them to stop the car. The seller had three or four trees left, more like bald sticks tied together. Albert grabbed the first one to hand, and of course it was the scraggliest.
They stuck the tree in a water-cooler bottle. The girls made decorations out of foil. Albert, beaming, said something like: what’s Christmas without a tree, now if we could only find you a girlfriend. The whole crowd sang carols until midnight. The presents for his children were in Pistone’s boot, and he was angry with himself. And at the same time, he writes, he understood that they wanted him to be happy and not feel alone.
One remark in passing set off someone else’s kindness, the kind you can’t turn down. And in January the same Albert introduced him to the Colombo people.
Who Will Speak for You
Two people can take to each other in an evening. But it’s often a third man who turns them into insiders.
In Sicily a “man of honour” couldn’t introduce himself to another “man of honour.” You needed a sponsor known to both, and a formula along the lines of “This is a friend of ours.” Diego Gambetta cites a case from the testimony of Antonino Calderone. In the fifties the son of a prominent member of a Catania family went to Philadelphia and was made there. When he came back to Sicily a few years later, he couldn’t tell his own father. He had to wait for Calogero Sinatra, who knew about the making and could confirm it, to come back.
That’s the extreme case. But it’s the same in the office. Always. The one who makes you one of us is whoever said to somebody else about you: “This one’s reliable.” And the sponsor is putting up his own word. That’s why nobody vouches for just anybody.
The Bottom Line
Look after the people who vouched for you: you spend their word every time you open your mouth.
Now for how it’s done to you. Warmth you didn’t pay for will send you a bill too. Sometimes it’s just friendship. And sometimes it’s the first instalment. If they’ve wrapped you in kindness before they know your surname, enjoy it. And work out whom you owe now.