Honor Thy Father Part 1

Honor Thy Father.

by Gay Talese

FOREWORD.

I KNEW GAY TALESE BEFORE I EVER MET HIM. THE YEAR WAS KNEW GAY TALESE BEFORE I EVER MET HIM. THE YEAR WAS 1958. I was twenty-three, living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, employed as an advertising designer, and trying to teach myself to write. 1958. I was twenty-three, living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, employed as an advertising designer, and trying to teach myself to write.

This was not easy. I had taken a few courses in what was then called "English composition" while attending art school at Pratt Inst.i.tute and in Mexico City, and I soon abandoned painting because the need to write stories kept getting in the way. Something in me demanded sequence and narrative, a primitive urge to say that this happened, and that happened, and as a result as a result, still another event happened. My cla.s.srooms in this other art were the books of great writers. Taunted and inspired by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, John O'Hara, and others, I began writing my own imperfect stories on an old Royal typewriter. I even had a plan. In art school, a teacher named Burne Hogarth told us that there were four stages in every artist's attempt at mastery: imitate, emulate, equal, surpa.s.s. I was still so young that I thought I could do the same with writing.

At the same time, I was reading about six newspapers a day, devouring them for information, news, fight results (for I was an avid boxing fan), comic strips, and political opinions. I loved the work of Murray Kempton (even when I did not understand it), Jimmy Cannon, Red Smith, Frank Graham, Dave Anderson. In magazines I soaked up the work of W. C. Heinz and A. J. Liebling.

In early 1958, I became friends with a wonderful young middleweight named Jose (Chegui) Torres. He trained in the Gramercy Gym on Fourteenth Street, five blocks from where I was living. As a fighter, Jose was a terrific puncher, with blurring hand speed, superb defense, and high ring intelligence. He was funny, too, in English and Spanish, laughing at his own jokes, occasionally bursting into song. One late afternoon, I walked up the two flights to the Gramercy, and went in. The gym was packed. Jose abandoned the speed bag and hurried to me.

"You see it?" he said. "You see the story in the Times Times? You see it?"

"What story?" I said.

"The story about me me!" No, I said. Jose turned and hurried into the small office where his manager, Cus D'Amato, sometimes slept on a cot, with a German shepherd as protection against enemies, real and imagined. Then he came back waving a folded section of The New York Times The New York Times in a gloved hand. in a gloved hand.

"Read it," Jose said. "It's beautiful."

So it was. An elegantly written portrait of a young fighter, full of exact details about where he lived in Brooklyn, and how he trained, and what he was like in the prize ring. Jose's name wasn't mentioned until the last paragraph.

The piece was written by Gay Talese.

After that, I began looking in the Times Times for new stories by this fellow Talese and was always impressed. He wrote in a deceptively simple style that reminded me in some way of the Latin prose I had studied in high school. The sentences were cla.s.sically designed, made of concrete nouns and active verbs. They seemed always to end with a hard word, so that a period was not even necessary. Long sentences alternated with short blunt sentences. The effect was sometimes lyrical, tempered by subtle ironies. The paragraphs were as solid as good brickwork. Those smooth paragraphs reminded me of the short stories of Irwin Shaw. for new stories by this fellow Talese and was always impressed. He wrote in a deceptively simple style that reminded me in some way of the Latin prose I had studied in high school. The sentences were cla.s.sically designed, made of concrete nouns and active verbs. They seemed always to end with a hard word, so that a period was not even necessary. Long sentences alternated with short blunt sentences. The effect was sometimes lyrical, tempered by subtle ironies. The paragraphs were as solid as good brickwork. Those smooth paragraphs reminded me of the short stories of Irwin Shaw.

But even in the tight, confined s.p.a.ces of a daily newspaper, the surface style always was rooted in Talese's reporting. He knew how to take a reader into a place, revealing what it looked like, and smelled like, where the light came from, and what made up the sound track. He was aware of the way clothes could convey cla.s.s and taste. The quotes were also used with precision, at once revealing character and moving the story forward. These early pieces for the Times Times were sketches by a fine draftsman. Later, in his full-length magazine articles and in his books, the work attained the depth and elegance of full-scale paintings. were sketches by a fine draftsman. Later, in his full-length magazine articles and in his books, the work attained the depth and elegance of full-scale paintings.

In 1958, Talese was twenty-six years old. He was born in Ocean City, New Jersey, just south of Atlantic City. His father was a tailor, and the Taleses were one of the few Italian American families among many Irish Americans. He was a shy, wary kid in school and, by his own account, a poor student. But he was learning to observe the world, to read it for signs of danger or the presence of social slights. In high school, he found his way to the school newspaper, which gave him his life. Some lessons taught by the example of his father remained with him for all the years that followed. Gay Talese (named for his stonemason grandfather, Gaetano) would write the best-tailored prose of his generation of journalists.

The Ivy League was beyond him, in those days still rheumy with nasty strains of anti-Italian cla.s.s prejudice. Talese ended up far from home, at the University of Alabama. There he majored in journalism, with growing ambitions to make his nonfiction as vital and deep as great works of the imagination. Like all of us, he was reading Hemingway, Fitzgerald, O'Hara, and (yes, I learned later) Irwin Shaw. They had many lessons to teach.

After graduating in 1953, Talese landed a job as a copy boy at The New York Times The New York Times. He managed to have several pieces published in the Times Times, and then was called up by the U.S. Army. The Korean War had ended in a cease-fire, but while in the university, Talese was a member of the ROTC. Now they came knocking at his door. Off he went, to serve as a public information office at Fort Knox, Kentucky, longing to return to The New York Times The New York Times. For any writer, boredom has its uses. He continued reading, writing, and imagining. When he returned to the Times Times in 1956, he was bursting with energy and journalistic visions. Literature had taught him that ordinary lives could be as dense, complicated, even heroic as those of people who ended up as statues in parks. He wanted to be their chronicler. in 1956, he was bursting with energy and journalistic visions. Literature had taught him that ordinary lives could be as dense, complicated, even heroic as those of people who ended up as statues in parks. He wanted to be their chronicler.

The path he followed at the Times Times led him into sports, with a focus on boxing. The prize ring offered primordial drama, one man against another, where the difference between triumph and defeat was often determined by will. Even in those days, when led him into sports, with a focus on boxing. The prize ring offered primordial drama, one man against another, where the difference between triumph and defeat was often determined by will. Even in those days, when The New York Times The New York Times was a rigidly edited, calcified newspaper, it was possible in sports to write more freely. That's why they called it sportswriting. Talese began to excel at the craft, while embracing one huge lesson that he had already sensed: the best stories were usually in the losers' dressing rooms. was a rigidly edited, calcified newspaper, it was possible in sports to write more freely. That's why they called it sportswriting. Talese began to excel at the craft, while embracing one huge lesson that he had already sensed: the best stories were usually in the losers' dressing rooms.

At the same time, he was trying to write stories about ordinary people, many of whom were glibly dismissed as "losers." At the Times Times, too many of those stories ended up on "the spike," literally a spike soldered into a flat slab of metal and placed on an editor's desk. It was the ultimate destination for rejected stories. Talese kept copies of his own rejected stories, reworked them, and started a.s.sembling his first book: New York: A Serendipiter's Journey New York: A Serendipiter's Journey. Here were glimpses into the lives of people you might pa.s.s in the streets, or who were sitting beside you on the subway, or working at mean jobs far from the bright lights of Broadway. That first book (with photographs by Marvin Lichtner) was published in 1961, and the lyrical opening section was the first piece of writing by Talese to appear in Esquire Esquire. It would not be his last.

In the summer of that same year, I went to work for The New York Post The New York Post, and my life had truly begun. While serving an apprentices.h.i.+p covering fires and murders, I was happier than I had ever been. Among Hogarth's laws of mastery, I didn't have time for the first stage: imitation. But I was a compendium of all I had read and admired, along with the commandments of some tough old tabloid editors. In the fall, I received two enormous gifts: my first byline, and my first working press card.

And in the Gramercy Gym one afternoon, I met Gay Talese.

He was dressed, of course, in a perfectly cut suit and tie, highly polished shoes, a coat draped over his forearm. Jose Torres introduced us, and Talese smiled, and said something nice about a story I'd written the week before. I told him how much I admired his work. He shrugged and smiled in a modest way. The gym was noisy with shouts, and grunts, and a trainer yelling, "chin down, chin down." Talese turned for a moment to the ring, where two welterweights moved fiercely against each other, their faces masked in thick headgear. His face went blank for a beat, as if he were recording what he was seeing. Then he turned back to me.

"I hope you're having fun down there," he said, meaning the Post Post.

"I love it."

"Sometimes, that's all you need," he said, in that year before the Beatles. And I would discover that he was right.

Across the decades that followed, we remained friends. To be sure, we weren't close; I was a downtown type, out of the bohemian tradition of the newspaper craft; Talese was more uptown. We met covering fights, or in restaurants, or at occasional parties. But I never lost my admiration for his adherence to the highest principles of the reporter's craft, his insistence on going beyond the surface, the quick hit, the glib a.s.sumption. He is doing that as I write.

This book-originally published in 1971-is only one example among many of the refusal of Gay Talese to take his discovered truths off the rack. He sets aside all the melodramatic temptations of the literature of the Mafia, and sees his cast as subjects, not objects. They exist in his pages as human beings, one at a time, not as cartoons. Talese understands, as all good reporters do, that you can never be certain about the truth. Human beings lie. They offer alibis. At their best, they plead "guilty with an explanation." At their worst, they blame others. In the world of the Bonannos, they usually say nothing at all.

Talese somehow managed to gain access to that world, to write about it with a certain degree of empathy, free of prosecutorial zeal. He is not exactly counsel for the defense, but by refusing moral certainty, he tells us more about that world than we knew before he published this book, and more than we have learned since then. It is an essential doc.u.ment in the project of understanding the American twentieth century. And it is more. Reading it again, I was reminded of the words of the splendid Italian writer Italo Calvino: "Every rereading of a cla.s.sic is as much a voyage of discovery as the first reading."

By that test, Honor Thy Father Honor Thy Father is a cla.s.sic. With any luck, my ten-year-old grandson will read it when Talese and I are both long gone. If he does, I hope he will understand how much his grandfather cherished the work of this fellow Talese, and the pleasure of his company. is a cla.s.sic. With any luck, my ten-year-old grandson will read it when Talese and I are both long gone. If he does, I hope he will understand how much his grandfather cherished the work of this fellow Talese, and the pleasure of his company.

-Pete Hamill 2009.

PART ONE.

THE DISAPPEARANCE.

1.

KNOWING THAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO SEE TOO MUCH, MOST doormen in New York have developed an extraordinary sense of selective vision: they know what to see and what to ignore, when to be curious and when to be indolent; they are most often standing indoors, unaware, when there are accidents or arguments in front of their buildings; and they are usually in the street seeking taxicabs when burglars are escaping through the lobby. Although a doorman may disapprove of bribery and adultery, his back is invariably turned when the superintendent is handing money to the fire inspector or when a tenant whose wife is away escorts a young woman into the elevator-which is not to accuse the doorman of hypocrisy or cowardice but merely to suggest that his instinct for uninvolvement is very strong, and to speculate that doormen have perhaps learned through experience that nothing is to be gained by serving as a material witness to life's unseemly sights or to the madness of the city. This being so, it was not surprising that on the night when the Mafia chief, Joseph Bonanno, was grabbed by two gunmen in front of a luxury apartment house on Park Avenue near Thirty-sixth Street, shortly after midnight on a rainy Tuesday in October, the doorman was standing in the lobby talking to the elevator man and saw nothing. doormen in New York have developed an extraordinary sense of selective vision: they know what to see and what to ignore, when to be curious and when to be indolent; they are most often standing indoors, unaware, when there are accidents or arguments in front of their buildings; and they are usually in the street seeking taxicabs when burglars are escaping through the lobby. Although a doorman may disapprove of bribery and adultery, his back is invariably turned when the superintendent is handing money to the fire inspector or when a tenant whose wife is away escorts a young woman into the elevator-which is not to accuse the doorman of hypocrisy or cowardice but merely to suggest that his instinct for uninvolvement is very strong, and to speculate that doormen have perhaps learned through experience that nothing is to be gained by serving as a material witness to life's unseemly sights or to the madness of the city. This being so, it was not surprising that on the night when the Mafia chief, Joseph Bonanno, was grabbed by two gunmen in front of a luxury apartment house on Park Avenue near Thirty-sixth Street, shortly after midnight on a rainy Tuesday in October, the doorman was standing in the lobby talking to the elevator man and saw nothing.

It had all happened with dramatic suddenness. Bonanno, returning from a restaurant, stepped out of a taxicab behind his lawyer, William P. Maloney, who ran ahead through the rain toward the canopy. Then the gunmen appeared from the darkness and began pulling Bonanno by the arms toward an awaiting automobile. Bonanno struggled to break free but he could not. He glared at the men, seeming enraged and stunned-not since Prohibition had he been so abruptly handled, and then it had been by the police when he had refused to answer questions; now he was being prodded by men from his own world, two burly men wearing black coats and hats, both about six feet tall, one of whom said: "Com'on, Joe, my boss wants to see you."

Bonanno, a handsome gray-haired man of fifty-nine, said nothing. He had gone out this evening without bodyguards or a gun, and even if the avenue had been crowded with people he would not have called to them for help because he regarded this as a private affair. He tried to regain his composure, to think clearly as the men forced him along the sidewalk, his arms numb from their grip. He s.h.i.+vered from the cold rain and wind, feeling it seep through his gray silk suit, and he could see nothing through the mist of Park Avenue except the taillights of his taxicab disappearing uptown and could hear nothing but the heavy breathing of the men as they dragged him forward. Then, suddenly from the rear, Bonanno heard the running footsteps and voice of Maloney shouting: "Hey, what the h.e.l.l's going on?"

One gunman whirled around, warning, "Quit it, get back!"

"Get out of here," Maloney replied, continuing to rush forward, a white-haired man of sixty waving his arms in the air, "that's my client!"

A bullet from an automatic was fired at Maloney's feet. The lawyer stopped, retreated, ducking finally into the entrance of his apartment building. The men shoved Bonanno into the back seat of a beige sedan that had been parked on the corner of Thirty-sixth Street, its motor idling. Bonanno lay on the floor, as he had been told, and the car bolted toward Lexington Avenue. Then the doorman joined Maloney on the sidewalk, arriving too late to see anything, and later the doorman claimed that he had not heard a shot.

Bill Bonanno, a tall, heavy, dark-haired man of thirty-one whose crew cut and b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt suggested the college student that he had been in the 1950s but whose moustache had been grown recently to help conceal his ident.i.ty, sat in a spa.r.s.ely furnished apartment in Queens listening intently as the telephone rang. But he did not answer it.

It rang three times, stopped, rang again and stopped, rang a few more times and stopped. It was Labruzzo's code. He was in a telephone booth signaling that he was on his way back to the apartment. On arriving at the apartment house, Labruzzo would repeat the signal on the downstairs doorbell and the younger Bonanno would then press the buzzer releasing the lock. Bonanno would then wait, gun in hand, looking through the peephole to be sure that it was Labruzzo getting out of the elevator. The furnished apartment the two men shared was on the top floor of a brick building in a middlecla.s.s neighborhood, and since their apartment door was at the end of the hall they could observe everyone who came and went from the single self-service elevator.

Such precautions were being taken not only by Bill Bonanno and Frank Labruzzo but by dozens of other members of the Joseph Bonanno organization who for the last few weeks had been hiding out in similar buildings in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. It was a tense time for all of them. They knew that at any moment they could expect a confrontation with rival gangs trying to kill them or with government agents trying to arrest them and interrogate them about the rumors of violent plots and vendettas now circulating through the underworld. The government had recently concluded, largely from information obtained through wiretapping and electronic bugging devices, that even the top bosses in the Mafia were personally involved in this internal feud and that Joseph Bonanno, a powerful don for thirty years, was in the middle of the controversy. He was suspected by other dons of excessive ambition, of seeking to expand-at their expense and perhaps over their dead bodies-the influence that he already had in various parts of New York, Canada, and the Southwest. The recent elevation of his son, Bill, to the number three position in the Bonanno organization was also regarded with alarm and skepticism by a few leaders of other gangs as well as by some members of Bonanno's own gang of about 300 men in Brooklyn.

The younger Bonanno was considered something of an eccentric in the underworld, a privileged product of prep schools and universities whose manner and methods, while not lacking in courage, conveyed some of the reckless spirit of a campus activist. He seemed impatient with the system, unimpressed with the roundabout ways and Old World finesse that are part of Mafia tradition. He said what was on his mind, not altering his tone when addressing a mafioso of superior rank and not losing his sense of youthful conviction even when speaking the dated Sicilian dialect he had learned as a boy from his grandfather in Brooklyn. The fact that he was six feet two and weighed more than 200 pounds and that his posture was erect and his mind very quick added to the formidability of his presence and lent substance to his own high opinion of himself, which was that he was the equal or superior of every man with whom he was a.s.sociating except for possibly one, his father. When in the company of his father, Bill Bonanno seemed to lose some of his easy confidence and poise, becoming more quiet, hesitant, as if his father were severely testing his every word and thought. He seemed to exhibit toward his father a distance and formality, taking no more liberties than he would with a stranger. But he was also attentative to his father's needs and seemed to take great pleasure in pleasing him. It was obvious that he was awed by his father, and while he no doubt had feared him and perhaps still did, he also wors.h.i.+ped him.

During the last few weeks he had never been far from Joseph Bonanno's side, but last night, knowing that his father wished to dine alone with his lawyers and that he planned to spend the evening at Maloney's place, Bill Bonanno pa.s.sed a quiet evening at the apartment with Labruzzo, watching television, reading the newspapers, and waiting for word. Without knowing exactly why, he was mildly on edge. Perhaps one reason was a story he had read in The Daily News The Daily News reporting that life in the underworld was becoming increasingly perilous and claiming that the elder Bonanno had recently planned the murder of two rival dons, Carlo Gambino and Thomas (Three-Finger Brown) Lucchese, a scheme that supposedly failed because one of the triggermen had betrayed Bonanno and had tipped off one of the intended victims. Even if such a report were pure fabrication, based possibly on the FBI's wiretapping of low-level Mafia gossip, the younger Bonanno was concerned about the publicity given to it because he knew that it could intensify the suspicion which did exist among the various gangs that ran the rackets (which included numbers games, bookmaking, loan-sharking, prost.i.tution, smuggling, and enforced protection). The publicity could also inspire the outcry of the politicians, provoke the more vigilant pursuit of the police, and result in more subpoenas from the courts. reporting that life in the underworld was becoming increasingly perilous and claiming that the elder Bonanno had recently planned the murder of two rival dons, Carlo Gambino and Thomas (Three-Finger Brown) Lucchese, a scheme that supposedly failed because one of the triggermen had betrayed Bonanno and had tipped off one of the intended victims. Even if such a report were pure fabrication, based possibly on the FBI's wiretapping of low-level Mafia gossip, the younger Bonanno was concerned about the publicity given to it because he knew that it could intensify the suspicion which did exist among the various gangs that ran the rackets (which included numbers games, bookmaking, loan-sharking, prost.i.tution, smuggling, and enforced protection). The publicity could also inspire the outcry of the politicians, provoke the more vigilant pursuit of the police, and result in more subpoenas from the courts.

The subpoena was dreaded in the underworld now more than before because of a new federal law requiring that a suspected criminal, if picked up for questioning, must either testify if given immunity by the court or face a sentence for contempt. This made it imperative for the men of the Mafia to remain inconspicuous if they wanted to avoid subpoenas every time there were newspaper headlines. The law also impeded the Mafia leaders' direction of their men in the street because their men, having to be very cautious and often detained by their caution and evasiveness, were not always where they were supposed to beat the appointed hour to do a job, and frequently they were unavailable to receive, at designated telephone booths at specific moments, prearranged calls from headquarters seeking a report on what had happened. In a secret society where precision was important, the new problem in communications was grating the already jangled nerves of many top mafiosi.

The Bonanno organization, more progressive than most partly because of the modern business methods introduced by the younger Bonanno, had solved its communications problem to a degree by its bell-code system and also by the use of a telephone answering service. It was perhaps the only gang in the Mafia with an answering service. The service was registered in the name of a fict.i.tious Mr. Baxter, which was the younger Bonanno's code name, and it was attached to the home telephone of one member's maiden aunt who barely spoke English and was hard of hearing. Throughout the day various key men would call the service and identify themselves through agreed-upon aliases and would leave cryptic messages confirming their safety and the fact that business was progressing as usual. If a message contained the initials "IBM"-"suggest you buy more IBM"-it meant that Frank Labruzzo, who had once worked for IBM, was reporting. If the word "monk" was in a message, it identified another member of the organization, a man with a tonsured head who often concealed his ident.i.ty in public under a friar's robe. Any reference to a "salesman" indicated the ident.i.ty of one of the Bonanno captains who was a jewelry salesman on the side; and "flower" alluded to a gunman whose father in Sicily was a florist. A "Mr. Boyd" was a member whose mother was known to live on Boyd Street in Long Island, and reference to a "cigar" identified a certain lieutenant who was never without one. Joseph Bonanno was known on the answering service as "Mr. Shepherd."

One of the reasons that Frank Labruzzo had left the apartment that he shared with Bill Bonanno was to telephone the service from a neighborhood coin box and also to buy the early edition of the afternoon newspapers to see if there were any developments of special interest. As usual, Labruzzo was accompanied by the pet dog that shared their apartment. It had been Bill Bonanno who had suggested that all gang members in hiding keep dogs in their apartments, and while this had initially made it more difficult for the men to find rooms, since some landlords objected to pets, the men later agreed with Bonanno that a dog made them more alert to sounds outside their doors and also was a useful companion when going outside for a walk-a man with a dog aroused little suspicion in the street.

Bonanno and Labruzzo happened to like dogs, which was one of the many things that they had in common, and it contributed to their compatibility in the small apartment. Frank Labruzzo was a calm, easygoing, somewhat stocky man of fifty-three with gla.s.ses and graying dark hair; he was a senior officer in the Bonanno organization and also a member of the immediate family-Labruzzo's sister, Fay, was Joseph Bonanno's wife and Bill Bonanno's mother, and Labruzzo was close to the son in ways that the father was not. There was no strain or stress between these two, no compet.i.tiveness or problems of vanity and ego. Labruzzo, not terribly ambitious for himself, not driven like Joseph Bonanno or restless like the son, was content with his secondary position in the world, recognizing the world as a much larger place than either of the Bonannos seemed to think it was.

Labruzzo had attended college, and he had engaged in a number of occupations but had pursued none for very long. He had, in addition to working for IBM, operated a dry-goods store, sold insurance, and had been a mortician. Once he owned, in partners.h.i.+p with Joseph Bonanno, a funeral parlor in Brooklyn near the block of his birth in the center of a neighborhood where thousands of immigrant Sicilians had settled at the turn of the century. It was in this neighborhood that the elder Bonanno courted Fay Labruzzo, daughter of a prosperous butcher who manufactured wine during Prohibition. The butcher was proud to have Bonanno as a son-in-law even though the wedding date, in 1930, had to be postponed for thirteen months due to a gangland war involving hundreds of newly arrived Sicilians and Italians, including Bonanno, who were continuing the provincial discord transplanted to America but originating in the ancient mountain villages that they had abandoned in all but spirit. These men brought to the New World their old feuds and customs, their traditional friends.h.i.+ps and fears and suspicions, and they not only consumed themselves with these things but they also influenced many of their children and sometimes their children's children-among the inheritors were such men as Frank Labruzzo and Bill Bonanno, who now, in the mid-1960s, in an age of s.p.a.ce and rockets, were fighting a feudal war.

It seemed both absurd and remarkable to the two men that they had never escaped the insular ways of their parents' world, a subject that they had often discussed during their many hours of confinement, discussing it usually in tones of amus.e.m.e.nt and unconcern, although with regret at times, even bitterness. Yes, we're in the wagon wheel business Yes, we're in the wagon wheel business, Bonanno had once sighed, and Labruzzo had agreed-they were modern men, lost in time, grinding old axes. This fact was particularly surprising in the case of Bill Bonanno: he left Brooklyn at an early age to attend boarding schools in Arizona, where he was reared outside the family, learned to ride horses and brand cattle, dated blonde girls whose fathers owned ranches; and later, as a student at the University of Arizona, he led a platoon of ROTC cadets across the football field before each game to help raise the American flag before the national anthem was played. That he could have suddenly s.h.i.+fted from this campus scene in the Southwest to the precarious world of his father in New York was due to a series of bizarre circ.u.mstances that were perhaps beyond his control, perhaps not. Certainly his marriage was a step in his father's direction, a marriage in 1956 to Rosalie Profaci, the pretty dark-eyed niece of Joseph Profaci, the millionaire importer who was also a member of the Mafia's national commission.

Bill Bonanno first met Rosalie Profaci when she was a young student attending a convent school in upstate New York with his sister. At that time he had a girl friend in Arizona, a casual American girl with a flair for freedom; while Rosalie was appealing, she also was demure and sheltered. That the young couple would meet again and again, during summer months and holidays, was largely due to their parents, who were very close and whose approval was bestowed in subtle but infectious ways whenever Rosalie and Bill would converse or merely sit near one another in crowded rooms. At one large family gathering months before the engagement, Joseph Bonanno, taking his twenty-year-old daughter Catherine aside, asked her privately what she thought of the likelihood that Bill would marry Rosalie. Catherine Bonanno, an independent-minded girl, thought for a moment, then said that while she was extremely fond of Rosalie personally she did not feel that Rosalie was right for Bill. Rosalie lacked the strength of character to accept him for what he was and might become, Catherine said, and she was about to say something else when, suddenly, she felt a hard slap across her face, and she fell back, stunned, confused, then burst into tears as she ran, never before having seen her father that enraged, his eyes fiery and fierce. Later he tried to comfort her, to apologize in his way, but she remained aloof for days although she understood as she had not before her father's desire for the marriage. It was a wish shared by Rosalie's father and uncle. And it would be fulfilled the following year, an event that Catherine Bonanno would regard as a marriage of fathers.

The wedding, on August 18, 1956, had been extraordinary. More than 3,000 guests had attended the reception at the Astor Hotel ballroom in New York following the church wedding in Brooklyn, and no expense was spared in embellis.h.i.+ng the occasion. Leading orchestras were hired for the dancing, and the entertainment included the Four Lads and Tony Bennett. A truckload of champagne and wine was sent as a gift by a distributor in Brooklyn, and it was arranged through Pan American Airways to have thousands of daisies flown in from California because that flower, Rosalie's favorite, was then unavailable in New York. The guest list, in addition to the legitimate businessmen and politicians and priests, included all the top men of the underworld. Vito Genovese and Frank Costello were there, having requested and received inconspicuous tables against the wall. Albert Anastasia was there (it was the year before his murder in the barbershop of the Park-Sheraton Hotel), and so was Joseph Barbara, whose barbecue party for nearly seventy mafiosi at his home in Apalachin, New York, three weeks after the murder, would be discovered by the police and would result in national publicity and endless investigations. Joseph Zerilli had come with his men from Detroit, and so had the Chicago delegation led by Sam Giancana and Tony Accardo. Stefano Magaddino, the portly old don from Buffalo, cousin of Joseph Bonanno, was given an honored table in front of the dais, and seated near him were other relatives or close friends of the Bonannos and Profacis. All of the twenty-four semi-independent organizations that formed the national syndicate were represented at the wedding, meaning that there were men from New England to New Mexico, and the group from Los Angeles alone totaled almost eighty.

Bill Bonanno, smiling next to his bride on the dais, toasting the guests and being toasted in turn, often wondered during the evening what the FBI would have done had it gotten its hands on the guest list. But there was little chance of that since the list, in code, had been in the careful custody of Frank Labruzzo and his men who were posted at the door to receive the guests and to escort them to their tables. There were no intruders on that night. There was not really a great deal of public concern over the Mafia in 1956. The Kefauver hearings of 1951 were already forgotten, and the Apalachin fiasco was one year away. And so the wedding and reception proceeded smoothly and without incident, with Catherine Bonanno as the maid of honor; and Joseph Bonanno, elegant in his cutaway, presided over the gathering like a medieval duke, bowing toward his fellow dons, dancing with the women, courtly and proud.

After the reception, during which the bridal couple had received in gift envelopes about $100,000 in cash, Bill Bonanno and his bride flew to Europe for a honeymoon. They stayed for a few days at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, then at the Excelsior in Rome; they received special attention in each place and were ushered quickly through customs at the airport. Later they flew to Sicily, and as the plane slowly taxied toward the terminal building in Palermo, Bill Bonanno noticed that a large crowd had gathered behind the gate and that a number of carabinieri were among them, standing very close to Bonanno's aging, bald-headed uncle, John Bonventre, who seemed rather grim and tense. Bonanno's first thought was that Bonventre, who had once served in the United States as an underboss in the Bonanno organization, was about to be deported from his native Sicily, to which he had gone the year before to retire, having taken with him from America a lifetime's supply of toilet paper, preferring it to the coa.r.s.e brands produced in Sicily. After the plane stopped but before the door opened, a stewardess asked that Mr. and Mrs. Bonanno please identify themselves. Slowly, Bill Bonanno raised his hand. The stewardess then asked that the couple be the first to leave the plane.

Walking down the ramp into the hot Sicilian sun, mountains rising in the distance behind sloping villages of tan stone houses, Bonanno sensed the crowd staring at him, moving and murmuring as he got closer. The old women were dressed in black, the younger men had fixed dark expressions, children were milling everywhere, and the statuesque carabinieri, flamboyantly dressed and brandis.h.i.+ng gleaming silver swords, stood taller than the rest. Then the uncle, Bonventre, bursting with a smile of recognition, ran with arms outstretched toward the bridal couple, and crowd followed, and suddenly the Bonannos were surrounded by clutching kissing strangers, and Rosalie, blus.h.i.+ng, tried without success to conceal the awkwardness she felt in the center of swarming unrestrained affection. Her husband, however, seemed to enjoy it thoroughly, reaching out with his long arms to touch everyone that he could, leaning low to be embraced by the women and children, basking in the adoration and salutations of the crowd. The carabinieri watched impa.s.sively for a few moments, then stepped aside, clearing a path that led toward a line of illegally parked automobiles waiting to take the couple to the first of a series of celebrations that would culminate with a visit on the following day to Castellammare del Golfo, the town in western Sicily where Joseph Bonanno was born and where the earlier Bonannos had long ruled as uomini rispettati- uomini rispettati-men of respect.

Rosalie had hoped that they would also visit her father's birthplace, a town just east of Palermo called Villabate, but her husband, without ever explaining why, indicated that this was impossible. Moments after he had landed at Palermo his uncle had whispered a message just received from the United States from the elder Bonanno insisting that the couple avoid Villabate. A number of friends and distant relatives of the Profacis still living in Villabate were then struggling with a rival gang for control over certain operations, and there had already been seven murders in the past ten days. It was feared that the enemies of Profaci's friends in Villabate might seek revenge for their dead upon Bill Bonanno or his wife, and although Rosalie persisted in her request to see Villabate, her husband managed to avoid the trip after making endless excuses and offering a busy itinerary of pleasant distractions. He was also relieved that Rosalie had not questioned, nor had even seemed to notice, the quiet group of men that followed them everywhere during their first day of sightseeing in Palermo. These men, undoubtedly armed, were serving as bodyguards for the Bonanno couple, even sitting outside the couple's hotel door at night to guarantee that no harm would come to them in Sicily.

The journey to Castellammare del Golfo, sixty miles west of Palermo, was the highpoint of the Sicilian visit for Bill Bonanno. As a boy he had seen on the walls at home framed photographs of his father's town, and he later noted references to it in history books and travel guides, although the references were very brief and superficial-it was as if the writers, with few exceptions, had quickly driven through the town without stopping, perhaps being intimidated by one published report claiming that eighty percent of Castellammare's adult male population had served time in prison.

There was no social stigma attached to this, however, because most of the local citizens regarded the law as corrupt, representing the will of invaders who had long sought to control the islanders and exploit the land through the conqueror's law. As with most of Sicily, the history of Castellammare had been turbulent for centuries, and Bonanno remembered reading that the island was conquered and reconquered no less than sixteen times-by Greeks, Saracens, and Normans, by Spaniards, Germans, and English, by various combinations and persuasions ranging from Holy Crusaders to Fascists. They had all come to Sicily and did what men do when away from home, and the history of Sicily was a litany of sailor's sins.

As the caravan of cars arrived at Castellammare, having driven for two hours along narrow mountain roads above the sea, Bill Bonanno felt a sudden sense of familiarity with the landscape that was beyond mere recognition from pictures. He felt united with all that he had imagined for years, all that he had heard as a boy from the reminiscing men gathered around his father's dinner table on Sunday afternoons. The town was actually quite beautiful, a tranquil fis.h.i.+ng village built along the bottom of a mountain, and at the very tip of the land, on a jagged rocky edge splashed by waves, stood the old stone castle that gave the town its name. The castle, built many centuries ago by the Saracens or Aragons, no one was absolutely certain, had served as the town's lookout for spotting invading s.h.i.+ps; but now it was a decaying structure of no purpose, and the elder Bonanno and the other men had recalled playing in it as boys.

Near the castle, along the small beach, were the fishermen, weatherworn and ruddy, wearing black berets; they were pulling in their nets as the Bonanno party pa.s.sed but were too busy to notice the line of cars. In the town square, near a church built four hundred years ago, were many men walking slowly, arm in arm, making many gestures with their hands. The stone houses, most of them two or three stories high with balconies in front, were arranged in tight rows along narrow cobbled roads over which was heard the clacking sounds of donkeys pulling colorfully painted wagons between the motor traffic. Here and there, sunning themselves in front of their doors, were groups of women, the unmarried ones seated with their backs to the street, possibly following a fas.h.i.+on inherited a thousand years ago when the Arabs occupied Sicily.

In front of one particularly well-constructed house on Corso Garibaldi, a crowd had gathered. When the procession of cars was spotted, the people stepped up to the curb, waiting. They were about thirty in number, dressed in dark clothes except for the children, one of whom held a bouquet of flowers. They were standing in front of the home where Joseph Bonanno was born, and the arrival of his son was regarded as an event of historical proportions. An indication of the Bonanno family status in Castellammare was the fact that the ceremony surrounding Joseph Bonanno's baptism in 1905 had marked the end of a shooting war between the local mafiosi and those in the neighboring village of Alcamo; and when Joseph Bonanno's father, Salvatore Bonanno, died in 1915, he was buried in the most prominent plot at the base of the mountain.

After the bridal couple was greeted by, and disentangled themselves from, the embracing crowds and had coffee and pastry with their cousins and compari compari, they went to the cemetery; and Bill Bonanno, standing before a large gravestone that exhibited a proud picture of a man with a handlebar moustache, sensed something more about his own father's relations.h.i.+p to the past. The eyes looking out from the gravestone were penetrating and dark, and Bill Bonanno could readily accept what he had heard of his grandfather's persuasive power, although he found it difficult to believe that this authoritative-looking photograph was of a man who had died at thirty-seven. His grandfather seemed to be a tall man-lean and tall unlike Sicilians. Perhaps this is because the Bonannos were not Sicilian by origin. Hundreds of years ago they had lived in Pisa, according to Joseph Bonanno, and had left rather hastily following a dispute with the ruling family. Joseph Bonanno, who kept a family coat-of-arms hanging in his home in the United States, a s.h.i.+eld decorated with a panther, had compiled a history of his ancestry that claimed kins.h.i.+p with Charles Bonanno, engineer of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

After Bill Bonanno returned from his honeymoon in September 1956, he urged his father to visit Castellammare. And a year later the elder Bonanno visited the town. But the recollection of the pleasant experiences of that trip were somewhat negated by certain events that followed in 1957 and other subsequent events. There was the publicity attached to the Anastasia murder and the Apalachin meeting, and in 1963 there was the Senate testimony of Joseph Valachi, the Mafia defector, who identified Joseph Bonanno as his sponsoring G.o.dfather and as the leader of one of New York's five "families" as well as a member of the nine-man national commission. Also in 1963 there was the dissension within Bonanno's organization, internal differences between a few old friends who had left Castellammare forty years before. And now, in October 1964, hiding in the apartment, Bill Bonanno, the son, was a partner in the tension and intrigue.

He was tired of it, but there was little he could do. He had not seen Rosalie or his four young children in several days, and he wondered about their well-being and wished that his relations.h.i.+p with his in-laws, the Profacis, had not declined as it had in recent years. He and Rosalie had now been married for seven years, and much had happened since their honeymoon, too much, and he hoped that he could repair the damage. What was required, he felt, was a new start, a second attempt in another direction, and he thought that they were moving toward this earlier in the year, in February, when they moved into their new home, a ranch-type house on a quiet tree-lined street in East Meadow, Long Island. They had finally left Arizona, which Rosalie had come to hate for a number of reasons, not the least of which was a certain woman in Phoenix, and they came East to live for a few months in the mansion of Rosalie's uncle Joe Magliocco in East Islip, Long Island, before getting their own home. The time spent at Magliocco's place was hectic, not only for them but also for their children.

The mansion was on a sprawling estate protected by high walls and trees and by watchdogs and gunmen. After the death of Joseph Profaci in 1962, Joe Magliocco, a muscular fat man weighing 300 pounds, had taken over the Profaci operation, including its control over the Italian lottery in Brooklyn. (Rosalie's father, Salvatore Profaci, was also dead at this point; he was killed before her wedding due to an explosion he had caused while working on an engine in his motorboat.) Magliocco, an impulsive man who lacked organizational ability, had also inherited many problems when he took over, the worst of which was an internal revolt of younger members led by the Gallo brothers. The dissension caused by the Gallo faction was still unresolved when Rosalie and Bill Bonanno moved in with Magliocco in 1963, and they sensed that things were becoming almost desperate for Magliocco in the late summer and fall of that year-men were coming and going at odd hours, the dogs were on constant alert, and Magliocco was rarely without his bodyguard even when walking short distances through his estate.

One morning in December, as the Bonanno's two-year-old son, Joseph, was crawling through the dining room, he reached between the china closet and the wall and pulled the trigger of a rifle that had been left standing there. The rifle blast blew a hole in the ceiling, hitting through the upper floor not far from where Magliocco lay sleeping. The fat man bolted out of bed, yelling, and Rosalie, who had been feeding her newly born infant in another part of the house, began to scream. The big house suddenly vibrated with a flurry of bodies running in panic, chasing and shouting-until the little boy was discovered downstairs, sitting on the rug wearing his red pajamas, stunned but safe, with a smoking rifle at his feet. Two weeks later, Joe Magliocco died of a heart attack.

2.

ON HEARING FRANK LABRUZZO RING THE DOWNSTAIRS bell, Bill Bonanno pressed the buzzer and then watched through the peephole of the apartment door. He saw Labruzzo step out of the elevator with newspapers under his arm, and he could tell by the pale expression on Labruzzo's face that something had gone wrong. bell, Bill Bonanno pressed the buzzer and then watched through the peephole of the apartment door. He saw Labruzzo step out of the elevator with newspapers under his arm, and he could tell by the pale expression on Labruzzo's face that something had gone wrong.

Labruzzo said nothing as he entered the apartment. He handed the papers to Bonanno. On the front page of every one in large headlines at the very top, was the news: JOE BANANAS-CALL HIM DEADJOE BONANNO IS KIDNAPED BY TWO HOODS IN NEW YORKMOB KIDNAPS JOE BANANASFBI JOINS KIDNAPER SEARCH Bill Bonanno felt feverish and dizzy. He sank into a chair, his mind racing with confusion and disbelief. The headlines, large letters spreading across the entire page, more prominent than the war in Vietnam and the social revolution in America, seemed to be screaming at him and demanding a reply, and he wanted to react quickly, to run somewhere to do something violent, hating the feeling of being helpless and trapped. But he forced himself to sit and read every paragraph. Most of the newspaper articles suggested that Joseph Bonanno was already dead, possibly encased in concrete and resting in a river. There was some speculation that he was being held hostage until he made certain concessions, and there was even a theory that the kidnaping was a hoax arranged by Joseph Bonanno himself as a way of avoiding an appearance before a federal grand jury meeting in Manhattan later in the week.

The younger Bonanno discounted the last point as absurd. He was convinced that his father had intended to appear before the grand jury as he had before others in the past-revealing nothing, of course, but at least appearing and pleading his innocence or seeking refuge in his const.i.tutional rights. Bill Bonanno also did not believe that his father would have attempted anything so tricky as a staged kidnaping without first consulting with Labruzzo and himself.

He watched Labruzzo pacing back and forth through the room like a caged animal. Labruzzo still had said nothing. Normally calm, he seemed at this moment nervous and fearful. Aware that he was being observed, Labruzzo turned and, as if trying to reestablish his position as a cool man under pressure, said almost casually, "Look, if its true that he's dead, there's nothing we can do about it."

"If it's true," Bonanno replied, "they're going to be looking for us next."

Labruzzo was again silent. Bonanno got up to turn on the television set and the radio for late news. He wondered if the location of their apartment was known to outsiders, and he also tried to figure out which men from his own organization might have collaborated in his father's capture, feeling certain that it had been handled partly from the inside. How else would they have known that Joseph Bonanno had planned to spend the night at Maloney's place? Everything had been done so neatly, the two gunmen appearing on Park Avenue just as the elder Bonanno stepped out of a cab, and Maloney, getting out first, running ahead through the rain and not seeing anything until after it had happened. Maloney might have been part of the deal, Bonanno thought, Maloney or one of the lawyers in his firm who knew of Joseph Bonanno's plans.

Bill Bonanno, like his father, was suspicious of most lawyers. Lawyers were servants of the court, part of the system, which meant that they could never be trusted entirely-or they were Mafia buffs, men who enjoyed being on the fringe of the gangster's world, who were fascinated no doubt by the occasional glimpses they got into the secret society. Sometimes they even became involved in Mafia intrigue, giving advice to one don or another, and s.h.i.+fting sides as the odds changed-it was a kind of game with them. And no matter which faction won or lost, the lawyers suryived. They lived to accompany their clients to the courthouse, and they later made statements to the press-they were a privileged clique, highly publicized, highly paid, often crooked but rarely caught, they they were the untouchables. Bonanno remembered having heard years ago of how the Mafia dons had complained among themselves about the exorbitant fees charged by certain lawyers after the police raided the Apalachin conference. A few dons claimed to have paid about $50,000 each for their legal defense, and since much of this was paid in cash, as the lawyers had requested, the mafiosi could only guess at the amount on which no taxes were paid. While Bonanno did not know Maloney or his legal partners personally or professionally, he nevertheless suspected the worst until evidence proved otherwise-they were lawyers, after all, they lived off other people's misery. were the untouchables. Bonanno remembered having heard years ago of how the Mafia dons had complained among themselves about the exorbitant fees charged by certain lawyers after the police raided the Apalachin conference. A few dons claimed to have paid about $50,000 each for their legal defense, and since much of this was paid in cash, as the lawyers had requested, the mafiosi could only guess at the amount on which no taxes were paid. While Bonanno did not know Maloney or his legal partners personally or professionally, he nevertheless suspected the worst until evidence proved otherwise-they were lawyers, after all, they lived off other people's misery.

As for the men who provided the muscle in the kidnaping, Bonanno a.s.sumed that they had the approval of the Mafia's national commission, which had recently suspended Joseph Bonanno from its members.h.i.+p. He also a.s.sumed that they acted under the personal direction of the Mafia boss in Buffalo, the senior member of the commission, seventy-three-year-old Stefano Magaddino, his father's cousin and former friend from Castellammare. Magaddino's apparent bitterness toward the elder Bonanno was a subject often discussed within the Bonanno organization in 1963 and 1964. It was believed to be based partly on the fact that Magaddino, whose territory extended from western New York into the Ohio Valley and included links with Canadian racketeers in Toronto, felt threatened by Joseph Bonanno's ambitions in Canada. For decades the Bonanno organization had worked in partners.h.i.+p with a group of mafiosi in Montreal, sharing most profitably in the importation of untaxed alcohol as well as in gambling and other illegal activities, including the control of the pizza trade and various protection rackets in Montreal's large Italian community. In 1963, when Joseph Bonanno applied for Canadian citizens.h.i.+p, Magaddino interpreted this as further evidence that Bonanno's Canadian interests were going to extend into Magaddino's territory, and he was overheard one day complaining of Bonanno: "He's planting flags all over the world!"

Even though Bonanno's pet.i.tion for Canadian citizens.h.i.+p was denied and was followed by his expulsion, Magaddino's suspicions persisted. The feeling was not based on any one issue, Bonanno's men believed, but was inspired by a combination of fear and jealousy. They remembered Magaddino's dark mood on the night of Bill Bonanno's wedding reception in 1956, how he had stood near the dais surveying the great gathering of mafiosi who had come from all parts of the nation out of respect for Joseph Bonanno, and Magaddino said in a loud voice to a man at his table: "Look at this crowd. Who the h.e.l.l's going to be able to talk to my cousin now? This will go to his head."

Bill Bonanno also sensed how little Magaddino thought of him, and how upset the Buffalo boss had become when the elder Bonanno sanctioned his elevation to number three man in the Bonanno organization and overlooked a member that Magaddino considered more worthy of promotion-Magaddino's own brother-in-law, Gaspar Di Gregorio. Di Gregorio had been a member of the Bonanno organization for thirty years, and until recent months Bill Bonanno believed that Di Gregorio was one of his father's most loyal followers. He was a quiet, una.s.suming gray-haired man of fifty-nine who ran a coat factory in Brooklyn and was virtually unknown to the FBI. Born in Castellammare, he fought alongside the elder Bonanno in the famous Brooklyn gang war of 1930, and a year later he was the best man when Joseph Bonanno married Fay Labruzzo. He was also Bill Bonanno's G.o.dfather, a friend and adviser during the younger Bonanno's years as an adolescent and student, and it was difficult for Bonanno to figure out when and why Di Gregorio had decided to pull away from the Bonanno organization and lure others with him. Di Gregorio had always been a follower, not a leader, and Bill Bonanno could only conclude that Magaddino had finally succeeded after years of effort to use Di Gregorio as the dividing wedge in the Bonanno organization. Di Gregorio took with him perhaps twenty or thirty men, perhaps more-Bill Bonanno could only guess, for there was no easy way to know who stood where at this point. Maybe fifty of the three-hundred-man Bonanno family had defected in the last month, influenced by the commission's decision to suspend the elder Bonanno and encouraged by Magaddino's a.s.surance that the commission would protect them from reprisals by Bonanno loyalists.

No matter what the situation was, Bill Bonanno knew that he could only wait. With his father gone, perhaps dead, it was important that he remain alive to deal with whatever had to be done. To venture outdoors at this point would be foolish and maybe suicidal. If the police did not spot him, Magaddino's men might. So Bonanno tried to suppress the fury and the despair that he felt and to resign himself to the long wait with Labruzzo. The phone was ringing now, the third code call in the past five minutes-the captains were reporting in from other apartments, available for any message he might wish to leave with the answering service. He would call in a few moments to let them know that he was all right.

It was noon. Through the venetian blinds he could see that it was a dark, dreary day. Labruzzo was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee, the dog at his feet. The pantry was well stocked with canned goods and boxes of pasta, and there was plenty of meat and sauce in the refrigerator. Bonanno, a fair cook, would now have lots of practice. They could exist here easily for several days. Only the dog would miss the outdoors.

Bonanno and Labruzzo lived in confinement for nearly a week, sleeping in s.h.i.+fts with their guns strapped to their chests. They were visited at night by the few men they trusted. One of these was a captain named Joe Notaro. He had been close to the Bonannos for years and was respected for his judgment and caution. But on his first visit to the apartment, Notaro admitted with regret and embarra.s.sment that he had probably been indirectly responsible for the elder Bonanno's capture.