Honor Thy Father (13 page)

After Profaci’s death from cancer in 1962, Bonanno had no close ally on the commission; and with the sixty-seven-year-old Vito Genovese serving a fifteen-year jail term, the commission was coming increasingly under the influence of Gambino, Lucchese, and Stefano Magaddino. None of the other members—Giancana of Chicago, Zerilli of Detroit, Bruno of Philadelphia—had the power or desire to counter-balance the first three, nor did any of them have a particular fondness for Joseph Bonanno. They, like Magaddino, were wary of his remoteness, and they were willing to accept Magaddino’s view that Bonanno craved inordinate power and was waiting in semiexile for them to wither in the heat of crime hearings or to die in jail—then, at an opportune moment, Bonanno would return to New York, would consolidate the disunited forces and emerge as the boss of bosses.

This theory gained substance in the summer of 1963 with word that Bonanno’s son had moved to New York and was living with Profaci’s successor, Magliocco, in East Islip, Long Island, where the younger Bonanno was perhaps working on a plan to unify the Profaci-Bonanno organizations. Even if this last point was not accepted as true by a majority of dons around the nation, they waited with caution and watched the movements of the younger Bonanno. At thirty-one Bill Bonanno was considered too young to lead, and from the way that Stefano Magaddino and Gaspar Di Gregorio had described him, many dons had reservations about him and felt that he was destined to cause trouble. His treatment of Rosalie was known to the commission, and it was given wide circulation by those men who sought to discredit Bill Bonanno.

Then in late July, Bonanno became involved quite inadvertently in an incident that caused even greater damage to his image, as well as to that of his father. It happened on an early Saturday afternoon when Joseph Magliocco, whose driver had taken the weekend off, asked Bill to drive him to the railroad terminal so that he could meet someone arriving by train. Magliocco told Bill to bring a gun, and Magliocco entered the car carrying a shotgun.

Bill was apprehensive but he did not ask questions, thinking that Magliocco would explain everything in the car. But Magliocco, sitting in the back with the shotgun in his lap, said nothing as Bill drove to the Brentwood station. He parked and remained in the car as the train pulled in. He saw a man, a stranger, step from the train and head directly for Magliocco’s car. The man smiled when he saw Bill Bonanno behind the wheel, said, “Hello, Bill,” then turned toward Magliocco.

“Everything all right?” Magliocco asked.

“Yes,” the man said, “everything is being taken care of.”

“OK,” Magliocco said. “Go ahead.”

The man quickly turned and reboarded the New York-bound train. Magliocco asked Bill to return home, still explaining nothing, which was fine with Bill. He was not sure that he wanted to know what Magliocco was up to, being bothered enough by the sound of it. He was also concerned by the manner in which the man had greeted him at the station—the man had seemed surprised and delighted to find Bill with Magliocco, concluding perhaps that Bill and the Bonanno organization was part of whatever was about to take place.

Within a week or two, Bill began to notice Magliocco’s increasing nervousness around the house, his pacing at night. Then one day in September, Magliocco revealed what had happened. He had been summoned by the commission, he said; he was fined $40,000 and was lucky to be alive. Magliocco’s scheme to dispose of Gambino and Lucchese had failed. Someone had leaked word to Gambino and Lucchese in advance, and now Magliocco was panicked by the possibility of a vendetta.

Suddenly Bill became infuriated. He blamed Magliocco for getting him involved. But Magliocco assured him that he had nothing to fear, insisting that he had taken full responsibility before the commission and had made it clear that the Bonannos played no part. Bill was unconvinced. Even if Magliocco had done as he had claimed, Bill could not count on the commission’s giving him the benefit of any doubt. He was sure that he and his father were in deep trouble, and the first thing that he wanted to do was to move out of Magliocco’s house, which was a likely target area.

But the home that Bill had found in East Meadow was not yet ready for occupancy; so he was forced to keep Rosalie and the children at Magliocco’s for three more months. It was a frenzied fall, grim and ominous as the leaves began to cover the estate and winter moved in and Magliocco rarely ventured outdoors.

Then in mid-December, Magliocco’s nerves were further frayed when Bill’s two-year-old son, Joseph, accidentally fired rifle bullets into the ceiling. Two weeks later, on December 28, 1963, Joseph Magliocco died of what the police called natural causes.

Suspense and uncertainty continued through the next year. Bill moved his wife and children—now including a fourth child, a daughter—into the home in East Meadow, but he kept the shrubbery trimmed low and installed bright lights in front of the house hoping to discourage gunmen from hiding there at night.

The rumors of the Gambino and Lucchese plot spread quickly through the underworld, and soon there were references to it in the newspapers. The reports, most likely the result of government wiretapping, identified the late Joseph Magliocco and the elder Bonanno as the suspects. It was also reported in the press that the Profaci organization was now under the command of Joseph Colombo, a man the government identified as one of Magliocco’s lieutenants who had probably tipped off Gambino or Lucchese.

Bill Bonanno received several messages during the summer and fall of 1964 that the commission wanted to reach his father; but Joseph Bonanno was constantly on the move, traveling with bodyguards between California and Arizona, Wisconsin and New York and Canada. It was not only the anticipation of being “hit” that kept him going; he was also trying to avoid the limelight of government investigators conducting a national anti-Mafia campaign in the wake of Joseph Valachi’s testimony before the Senate. Valachi had given special prominence to Bonanno during the televised hearings in 1963, claiming that it was Bonanno who initiated him into the Mafia, pricking fingers and exchanging blood to symbolize their unity. This ceremony had supposedly occurred decades ago, and Bonanno since then had been no more aware of Valachi than an army general would be of a private; but Valachi’s revelations about the secret society and Bonanno’s link to the traitor were embarrassing to Bonanno.

After being expelled from Canada in late July, Bonanno returned briefly to Tucson, then reappeared in New York. He held secret meetings with his officers, and he also conferred unofficially with emissaries from the commission—among them Sam De Cavalcante of New Jersey—expressing willingness to meet with the commission; but there was never an agreement on a time and place, and there was suspicion and fear of an ambush on both sides. Bonanno also made an attempt during the fall of 1964 to meet with Di Gregorio. Once he reached him by telephone, but his old friend broke down in tears, confessing that he could not meet with Bonanno because of instructions he had received from the commission.

A few of Bonanno’s men wanted to dispose of Di Gregorio because of his disloyalty, but Bonanno emphatically rejected the suggestion. It would accomplish nothing, he said, and he was more saddened than angered by Di Gregorio’s response. They had known one another nearly all their lives, had been born in the same year within a few miles of one another in western Sicily, had fought together as young men during the Brooklyn feuds. Bonanno blamed Stefano Magaddino for corrupting the friendship; Magaddino’s jealousy, the sickness of so many Sicilians, had slowly infected Di Gregorio in later years, Bonanno felt, and while there was no logic to this there was also no cure.

Bonanno’s ruling against those who wished to harm Di Gregorio was one of the last decisions that he made in 1964. It was a few nights later that Joseph Bonanno dined with Maloney.

A
FTER
B
ILL
B
ONANNO’S LONELY
C
HRISTMAS
E
VE IN
T
IMES
Square and his impulsive decision to escape the grim holiday week in New York, he spent nearly three days and nights on the road to Arizona; then at noon on December 28, 1964, a clear and balmy day, he arrived on the outskirts of Tucson and checked into the Spanish Trail Motel. He was accompanied by his dog and by the young man who had helped with the driving, a relative of Vito De Filippo, whom the government had identified as a Bonanno lieutenant operating a gambling casino for the elder Bonanno in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Bill was not tired after the 2,600-mile ride; he was in fact charged with energy and exhilaration, was delighted to be out of New York and back in Tucson, and the first thing he wanted to do upon arrival was to head straight into the center of town to revisit certain places and people, to bask in the familiarity of this small city where he had once felt so much at home. Even now, despite all that had happened, he was confident that he could walk through the main streets of Tucson, could wave and talk to the people he had known for years, and, unless the police stopped him, he could continue in freedom. He did not think that the average citizens of the city were against him, even those few quoted in local newspapers advocating that the Bonannos be ejected; they had been prompted into saying those things by the reporters, he felt sure, certain that it had been largely the newspaper publishers, together with the politicians and a publicity-seeking police chief, who had inspired the whole campaign against his family in recent years. They were hypocrites, he thought, particularly the politicians and a few priests, remembering how often they had come in the past to the Bonanno home, had been dined and wined, and had never once questioned the source of the money that they had quickly pocketed.

Thinking about this embittered him, and he was aware of how personally he had taken each slight in Tucson. What had been said or written about the Bonannos in Phoenix or in Flagstaff or in New York or anywhere else in America did not greatly concern him. But his acceptance in Tucson seemed fundamental to his pride; it was his only home, he had come to it as a boy and had remained for twenty years, had gone to school there, made friends there, and wanted to believe that those friends would not blow the whistle on him now should he walk through the streets of the city. But he had no intention of testing his popularity at the moment.

After settling himself in the motel, he made plans to look up his brother, to drive during the evening past his property, to contact his father’s associates. One of the first people he reached was Charles Battaglia, whom the government listed as Joseph Bonanno’s top aide in Tucson. Battaglia quietly visited Bill at the motel, and they spent several hours together. Afterward Bill was fatigued, too tired to go out; so he went to bed.

He slept late the next morning, had breakfast with his companion, then went outside to walk the dog. It was another fine day, and he enjoyed the clear air and seeing the great spaciousness of this desert city. He continued to walk for a few minutes with the dog, wondering how difficult it would be to reach his brother; he had not seen him in a very long time but, according to what he had heard, Joe Jr. was as outlandish as ever. His brother was said to be traveling with assorted odd characters between Phoenix and Tucson—long-haired musicians, bronco riders, drag racers, television actors. Anyone who was a bit off-beat would appeal to his teen-age brother, and his brother appealed to them, too, because he was funny and handsome and willing to do anything crazy on a moment’s notice, anything to gain attention. Bill remembered how his kid brother had cavorted as a child on the edge of Niagara Falls during a family visit and had nearly fallen; how he had once hidden in an ice truck at the age of three and would have frozen to death if the driver had not discovered him; how he used to shock his mother by bringing home stray animals, once a hamster, once a bobcat, and worms to put in the holy water. Joe Jr. was sent to military school, but had quit, had been to several schools since then, and now was presumably in college, although Bill had heard that his brother was training horses and was appearing as a cowboy actor on television. One of the scheduled shows was NBC’s “High Chaparral,” which was to be filmed about fifteen miles west of Tucson, and Bill smiled at the thought of network executives in New York sitting in a screening room watching dusty gun scenes that included, unknown to them, the youngest son of Joseph Bonanno.

Bill walked the dog further along the road, his mind wandering pleasantly, and then suddenly he stopped and quickly turned around. He expected to find someone standing behind him or someone observing him through binoculars from the roof of the motel. But he saw no one. There was no sign of movement along the road, nobody was seated in the car parked in the lot, and yet he was sure he was being watched, trusting his instinct for sensing such things. Without waiting for further confirmation, he headed back to the motel.

His room was as he had left it, the television set was on. In the adjoining room his companion sat reading the morning newspaper. Bill related his suspicions; then he decided to test his instincts immediately—he would hang around in front of the motel for a while, would make himself obvious, and if he was being followed or sought he would soon know it.

It was an odd decision, and it surprised him at first, causing him to wonder if being back in Arizona had made him more lax or careless. But he finally concluded that after so many months of hiding, there was no longer any advantage in it. In New York, hiding had been necessary, especially after the disappearance of his father more than two months ago; it had then been his duty to remain free for the morale of the men and for whatever contribution he could make during his father’s absence. Now, however, that situation had changed. His father was said to be alive, and there was nothing for him to do until his father’s return. If the FBI or the Tucson police had just spotted him, it was no tragedy because they could not prove he had committed a crime. The worst that they might prove was that he had been hiding, and if forced to explain why, he could say he had become apprehensive over the threats to his safety that he read about in the newspapers.

He walked casually from his room in the rear of the large motel to the front of the place, standing near the office along the road. His friend accompanied him, and they stood talking for a few minutes in the sun. Then Bill noticed a barbershop nearby, and, deciding he could use a light trim, he walked in, his friend following. It was a three-chair shop, was not very busy, and a white-haired barber stood smiling and said, “You’re next.”

Bill did not recognize anyone in the shop. He picked up a magazine and sat in the chair. His friend took a seat near the door.

“You visiting?” the barber asked, cheerfully, tossing a sheet around his shoulders. Bill nodded.

“You planning to stay long?”

“Yes, if I like the place, I’d like to stay,” Bill said.

A manicurist approached him, but Bill shook his head, continued to flip through the magazine, looking up every few moments into the large mirror reflecting the road. He saw a car pull up, then another, then a police car. Two more police cars arrived, also press cars with photographers.

“Hey, what’s all the commotion outside?” one of the barbers asked.

Bill’s barber turned toward the window, whistled softly as he continued to snap the scissors over Bill’s head. Bill said nothing. Then he spotted a local FBI agent that he had known from the past, Kermit Johnson, walking into the barbershop, followed by other men. Bill forced a smile, waved, and called out:

“Hi, Kermit.”

Kermit Johnson seemed embarrassed by the sign of familiarity, but then he softened and replied, “Hello, Bill, how are you?” Johnson stood awkwardly in front of the chair for a moment, and the barber looked at him and said, “Won’t be long, sir. You’ll be next.”

Johnson, looking straight at Bill, asked, “You know why I’m here?”

“Yes, I know,” Bill said. “Can I finish my haircut? Or are you going to make a scene?”

“No, I’m not going to make a scene,” Johnson said. “Are you armed?”

Bill replied, in a tone of mock innocence, “Kermit, don’t be silly.”

The barber was becoming nervous.

“Excuse me,” the barber finally interrupted, pointing toward the crowd of policemen and photographers gathered along the sidewalk, “what are all those gentlemen doing outside?”

“Those
gentlemen
, Bill said, “are waiting for
me
.”

The barber said nothing for a moment, the words setting in; then his hands began to shake, and he could barely hold onto the scissors.

Bill was taken to the sheriff’s office of Pima County, was arrested on a material-witness warrant issued by a federal judge in New York. He received a subpoena to appear before the grand jury in Manhattan that was investigating organized crime and his father’s disappearance, was held on $25,000 bail pending that appearance, and was forced to relinquish the $215 he carried in his pocket, and also his 1964 Cadillac, toward the tax lien on his Arizona property. Before entering the jail cell, where he would spend two days, he shook hands with the police, waved and smiled at the photographers. Like his father, he was determined not to give them the grim, guilt-ridden picture that he felt sure they wanted.