Business or Blood (38 page)
Authors: Peter Edwards
Among those standing outside, braving the bitterly cold, minus-twenty-five temperature and sharp wind, was a Montreal waiter who remembered Vito as a polite, if careful, customer. The waiter had known Vito for two decades and recalled how Vito had told him to
watch that no one poisoned his food when dining out. Who could say if another waiter from another restaurant knew why Vito's health had suddenly spiralled in the final hours of his life? If one did, he stood to gain nothing by talking about it.
An hour later, bells tolled as they had for the Violis and so many others. Vito's body, Libertina and the remnants of his family were led from the church by greying men in matching black fedoras, a tribute to Vito's beloved father. Vito was escorted slowly to the St. Francis of Assisi cemetery, in a convoy of a dozen black limousines that had been parked on Dante Street.
Calogero Renda's immigration papers. Renda accompanied Vito Rizzuto's namesake grandfather to the USA from the family's Sicilian home village of Cattolica Eraclea.
Vito Rizzuto Sr. landed in New Orleans in 1925. He would die in New York state in 1933, never again seeing his young son, Nicolò.
Thirty-year-old Nicolò Rizzuto arrived with his young family in Halifax in 1954, including eight-year-old Vito and his six-year-old sister, Maria.
In Montreal, the Rizzutos would clash with the more established Paolo Violi, seen here at his Reggio Bar.
Vito (in black) and other members of the hit team (Gerlando Sciascia, left; Joey Massino, right; other, unknown), the day after the 1981 Three Captains mob killings in Brooklyn. The murder cemented Vito's standing with the Bonanno Mafia family of New York, who considered Montreal their turf.
Nicolò and his wife, Libertina, herself the daughter of a powerful Mafia don in Sicily.
Nicolò, arrested and charged for cocaine trafficking in Venezuela in 1988. He returned to Montreal in 1993.
Like Vito, Smiling Joe Di Maulo was a mediator on the streets.
The Consenza Social Club in Saint-LÃonard, chief meeting place and hangout for senior members of the Rizzuto crime family.
'Ndrangheta members Cosimo Stalteri and Michele Racco. By the 2000s, octogenarian Stalteri would be the most senior of the Ontario group's ruling
camera di controllo
.
Raynald Desjardins was Vito's right-hand man, until a major cocaine bust put the Quebecer behind bars for a decade. He returned an embittered rival and major threat to his former boss.
An invitation to golf with Vito was often tantamount to a performance review.
