How to Talk to Your Capo

Until now I’ve mostly taught you to talk to people on the outside: the client, the supplier, the stranger. Our own people, Anna, the drivers, came up too, but only in passing. Now about the ladder itself: who’s above you, who’s below you, and how orders travel. These people are harder to talk to. A client can walk away. Your capo can’t, and you can’t walk away from him either.

When Lefty took Donnie under his wing, the first thing he did was explain the rules to him. Pistone wrote them down. In the company of a captain or the boss of a family, you were supposed to keep quiet and stand off to one side unless you were invited into the conversation. And in a dispute between one of your own and an outsider, you always took your own man’s side, even if he was in the wrong.

The second half is a caste rule, and I don’t recommend it to you. But the first half is pure gold. Keeping quiet in front of a senior man until you’re called isn’t cowardice. It means not taking the floor away from him.

Speak When You’re Spoken To

Gambetta, going through Tommaso Buscetta’s testimony, notes the same trait among the Sicilians: a man of honour who asks too many questions looks suspiciously curious. And at once he adds the other half: answers that run too long undermine a man’s reputation for being manly and in control of himself.

Carry that over to the office. When your capo asks, answer briefly and to the point. Don’t tell him how you got there unless he asked. A long answer sounds like an excuse. And an excuse sounds like guilt.

And don’t open your mouth at someone else’s meeting until you’re called on. Even if you know the answer. Especially if you know it. Tell him afterwards, in private. He won’t remember the answer; he’ll remember that you let him be the one to give it.

One Thing in Public, Another in Private

In forty years the Don and I had only one real row. Once, in front of a supplier, I corrected the Don: he’d named the wrong price for last year’s oil, and I gave the right one. The supplier looked at the Don, then at me, and at that moment I understood what I’d done. The price was right. The mistake was correcting him in front of an outsider.

The Don said nothing in front of the guest. That evening, in the kitchen, he said just one thing: “In front of people, you and I are one. You can argue with me in here, as much as you like.” And he never came back to it.

After that I argued with the Don often, and sometimes I won. But only in the kitchen. In public I backed him even when I meant to prove him wrong that same evening. That isn’t bootlicking. It’s order: if outsiders see two men from one Family arguing, they start bargaining with each of them separately.

Just learn to tell backing from agreeing. And an opinion from a figure. The Don’s opinion, whom to take on, what to believe, how to run the business, could wait for the kitchen. But a wrong price, that day, couldn’t wait for the kitchen: the supplier would have taken it home and written it down. Letting it stand wouldn’t have been loyalty. It would have been joining in the mistake.

It did need correcting. Not by me, and not like that. I could have said, “Don, is that under last year’s contract? I’ll bring the book,” and gone out for the book. The Don would have seen the figure himself and named it himself. The price right, and his face saved. If he hadn’t seen it, I’d have shown him the page before the guest got up from the table, not that evening. It took me about two years to think of this. I never told the Don: he never came back to that day, and neither did I.

So here’s what you do. Whatever can wait, keep for the kitchen. A figure, a deadline, a promise that the outsider will carry away with him, correct at once, but so that it’s the capo who corrects it. And when he’s wrong on the substance, don’t agree with him at all. Tell him in private. A capo who hears the truth only from his enemies doesn’t last long.

Check the Order Back

For a while Pistone worked the door at Tony Mirra’s bar, taking the entrance money. One night a group of guys with their girlfriends refused to pay and demanded Mirra. Mirra came and yelled at Donnie: these guys don’t have to pay. Donnie answered, as Pistone tells it, that he was only following Tony’s orders, and Tony had never said it was free for friends. Mirra told him to let them in.

Pistone was partly playing a part, partly letting off steam. But the lesson in it is real. If you didn’t check the limits of an order, whom to charge and whom not, until what hour, how much you can spend, and the capo didn’t spell them out, the order will be carried out to the letter. And both of you will be to blame. Only it’s you they’ll shout at.

So check it back. Not “why?”, but “have I got this right: by Friday, the whole batch, and if we can’t make it I call you on Thursday?” That isn’t distrust. It’s insurance for both of you.

Don’t Overdo the Respect

After three captains of the Bonanno family were killed, Donnie and one of Sonny Black’s men went down to Florida to tell the dead men’s people that Sonny ran everything now. One of the Florida men, Steve Maruca, once a fearsome old-school gangster, was nervous and fawning. He asked how things were looking. And he hurried to disown his former captain: he’d only met him three times or so, he said. The answer was cold and short. And as for his opinion, he was told, in Pistone’s account, that the subject was closed and he’d do well to keep his views to himself.

Too much respect sounds like fear. And fear sounds like guilt. The more Maruca excused himself, the less he should have said. A new power doesn’t need your oaths. It needs you to do the work.

Respect for a senior man means doing what you promised, arriving on time and not wasting his time. Not bowing lower than everyone else.

The Bottom Line

Come to your capo with a proposal, not just a question. I did that for forty years, and the Don rarely told me I’d come for nothing.

And from the other side, watch how people talk to you. A subordinate who agrees with everything in public and keeps quiet in private isn’t loyal, he’s careful. A subordinate who bows too low is afraid of something. Find out what, before it’s too late.