Honor Thy Father (37 page)

He walked in shortly before 2:00
P.M.
, followed by another man and also by Catherine’s husband. Catherine was in Tucson with her children visiting the elder Bonannos; she would be returning by plane later in the evening. Bill greeted his mother-in-law and Ann cordially in the kitchen, nodded toward Rosalie, then continued into the living room, where Lou got up to pat him on the back and mix him a drink. Josephine, who sat wearing bell-bottomed trousers, a white sweater, and the round-toed shoes that were the latest fashion, focused her dark eyes on Bill momentarily, then announced with just the slightest edge, “Well, the man has arrived, and now we can eat.”

Bill forced a smile, ignoring a reply, and then Rosalie, removing her apron, came in and sat down, and Lou fixed her a drink. From the kitchen could be heard the rattling sound of snail shells cooking in the pot, reminding Rosalie of the large family feasts from her girlhood days when her uncles Joseph Profaci and Magliocco had been alive, and she remembered that when the live snails were left in the sink and ignored while other food was being prepared, they would sometimes slowly crawl up from the sink and would begin to climb the walls. Bill reminisced about those days too, about Magliocco’s voracious appetite, and the extraordinary sight of Magliocco, who weighed about 300 pounds and was not very tall, gracefully mounting a horse each morning and galloping around the estate at East Islip.

When Mrs. Profaci stood smiling in the doorway, indicating that dinner was ready, everyone was seated, and steaming plates were passed around the table. Bill inhaled the aroma of the food spread before him, and after tasting the snails, he complimented Mrs. Profaci and lifted his wine glass in a toast. Then he proceeded to tell everyone about the new book that he was reading,
The Godfather
, which none of the others had heard of; and after describing a few dramatic passages, Ann said, “Boy, that sounds like a wonderful organization—I’d like to join it as a gun moll.”

“You should,” Bill said, “you’ve got good recommendations.”

Everybody laughed except Josephine, who did not look up from her plate.

Mrs. Profaci said that she had recently seen
The Brotherhood
at Radio City, starring Kirk Douglas, but before she could offer her opinion of it, Bill interrupted to say that it was one of the most stupid films ever made.

“There’s this ridiculous scene in the end where two brothers kiss, and then one brother takes a gun and shoots the other,” Bill said. “Its real Hollywood crap.”

Mrs. Profaci, without refuting him, said nonetheless that she had been moved to tears during one scene when a character was identified as Turiddu, which was what her late husband had been called. Even as she repeated the name now, at the table, her voice became soft, and she said, “May his soul rest in peace.”

Her husband had been a kind and loving man, Mrs. Profaci continued, after a pause, although she did admit that he had been extremely strict and that his rules had been especially hard on Rosalie, the first-born daughter. Mrs. Profaci remembered one evening many years ago when, because her husband was expected to be out of town for a few days, she permitted Rosalie to accept a date to attend a dance with a West Point cadet. But just as Rosalie was about to leave the house, dressed in a beautiful gown, her father unexpectedly appeared, and he immediately demanded to know where she was going. Mrs. Profaci, trying to seem casual, had explained that Rosalie was joining other young girls at a dance, adding that she would be home early; but Mr. Profaci, furious, insisted that his daughter return to her room and change her clothes—she would be going nowhere on this evening.

As Mrs. Profaci recounted the incident now, more than fifteen years later, there was silence at the table. Then Rosalie stood and turned toward the sink, carrying a few dishes.

The next course was ravioli, and Lou poured red wine in the glasses as Bill tasted the ravioli. His expression changed slightly, and he said to Lou, who sat next to him. “I think it’s not cooked enough. Mine is a little hard.”

Lou tasted the ravioli from his plate, and agreed that it was hard. Mrs. Profaci, who did not seem at all perturbed, offered to cook the ravioli a bit longer, but Josephine from the opposite side of the table disagreed, saying after she had sampled it, “It’s very good, Mom. I like it hard.”

Bill looked at Josephine, measuring her for a moment, and then he said with a grin, “Oh, you like it
hard
, do you?”

Josephine looked directly at Bill, having caught the double entendre immediately, and she replied, “Yes, Bill, I like it hard.”

Ann laughed and then changed the subject by focusing on Bill’s Day-Glo orange shirt: “That’s some shirt you’re wearing, Bill, that’s quite a color.”

“Its designed for men who stand on aircraft carriers, and flag down planes,” he said, “It makes a wonderful target, which is why I don’t wear it in New York.”

This got a laugh around the table, and then Bill asked one of the men if he had heard any news from New York. When the man said he had not, Bill frowned and said, “I’m going to make a call.”

Ann again addressed Bill, asking in a good-humored chiding way, “Why do you people spend so much money on phone calls? Why don’t you write a letter once in a while?”

“
What
, “Bill exclaimed, laughing, “and put it in writing!”

They continued to eat the ravioli, which Bill had not permitted his mother-in-law to cook longer, preferring to drop the subject. And then Mrs. Profaci noticed a car pulling up in the driveway—Tim had arrived, and Josephine stood to greet him at the door. While the others continued to eat and Bill told a joke, the young couple spoke between themselves for a few moments in the vestibule; then Josephine, followed by Tim, returned to the table. Lou and Bill and the other men stood to shake hands, and Tim greeted them by name. He had met Bill and Lou many times before and he seemed poised and particularly pleased to see Mrs. Profaci, who had already met his parents and was on friendly terms with them. A chair was obtained for Tim, and he squeezed in next to Josephine. He was wearing chinos and boots, and a button-down shirt under his sweater, and his blond hair was long but neatly barbered. As Bill looked across the table at Tim, he was reminded of the fact that Tim resembled the photographs of Robert F. Kennedy years ago when Kennedy had been the attorney general.

As Mrs. Profaci got Tim a plate of food, and Lou poured him a glass of wine, the conversation became more general; but Josephine, who was holding Tim’s hand underneath the table, turned to him and soon they were speaking softly to one another, ignoring the other conversations. They were a typical young couple about to be married, completely absorbed in themselves and only remotely aware of the rest of the family around them. Occasionally Mrs. Profaci or Rosalie or Ann would pass a serving dish of food toward Tim but they tried not to interrupt the private conversation. They were very happy that Josephine seemed happy, were pleased about the coming marriage despite whatever reservations that they had once expressed. Josephine Profaci was going off in a new direction, was breaking with many traditions and customs of her family, but her older sisters and her mother were secure in their belief that the love they shared with Josephine would keep them close no matter how far she moved in the future from the familiarity of their past.

After coffee was served, Josephine and Tim stood and said that they had to be getting back to their respective campuses. Both had schoolwork to do that night, they said, and Tim, an English major, further explained his hasty departure to the Bonannos and Profacis: “I’ve got a paper due on Lear.”

D
ESPITE THE FACT THAT HE OWED THE GOVERNMENT A
small fortune in back taxes and claimed to be bankrupt because all his property and other assets had been confiscated by Internal Revenue agents, Bill Bonanno walked into the Brooklyn Supreme Court Building on Monday morning, April 14, wearing an expensive pair of alligator shoes, a new green suit that had cost $250, and displaying a broad smile and a deep suntan. Should anyone remark on his tan, he would reply that he had been playing golf every afternoon at Pebble Beach in California; but this explanation would be as false as the front he was presenting at this moment as he strolled jauntily out of the elevator on the sixth floor and headed toward the courtroom, seeing ahead of him at the end of the corridor the pale, grim face of John Morale and other dour-looking men from the Di Gregorio camp who reportedly had spent a miserable winter hiding indoors in New York. Bill hoped that he would make them more miserable by presenting to them today his own sunny portrait of good health and prosperity.

There was little else that could be accomplished during this visit to Brooklyn, for he had known even before leaving California that his attorney, Albert Krieger, would be occupied for weeks with a trial in Staten Island, which would result in the rescheduling of Bill Bonanno’s appearance until sometime in May; but even so, he was ordered by the court to come in person to Brooklyn to deliver the affidavit that Krieger had signed. While Bill had no choice in the matter, he decided that he would at least make an impressive entrance in Brooklyn, and he had begun during the previous week by sunning himself in his backyard in San Jose, by selecting his most flamboyant wardrobe to wear in court, and by planning to exhibit in the corridor a carefree spirit that might perturb those codefendants who had defected but who, according to the latest rumors, were now unhappy with the shortage of money and weak leadership that they were experiencing under Di Gregorio’s successor, Paul Sciacca. The sidewalk shooting in the Bonanno feud had stopped, the cold war phase had now begun.

When Bill was almost to within speaking distance of Morale and the others huddled in the corner, he heard a girl’s voice calling out his name. Turning, he saw Krieger’s pretty young secretary carrying the legal papers that Bill was to take in to the clerk or the judge. Bill greeted her warmly, putting an arm around her. Then he asked in a voice loud enough to be heard across the corridor, “Jane, how long do you think this’ll take?”

“It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes,” she said.

“Good,” he said, “because I really want to get out of here.”

“What’s ycur hurry?” she asked, lightly. And it was the question he had hoped for.

“I have this golf date tomorrow at Pebble Beach,” he said, casually, “and I’d like to keep it.” He perceived through the corner of his eye that the men were listening and were pretending that they were not.

“Well, Bill, you really look great,” Jane went on, looking at his new suit and his silk tie and the white shirt that accentuated his tan.

“Why shouldn’t I?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t have a care in the world out there. No responsibilities, no worries. The biggest problem I have, really, is getting to the course on time.”

She laughed, and stood waiting for another moment. Then, looking at her watch, she said that she had better be getting back to the office.

“Listen,” he said quickly, “why not wait for me for a minute? I’ve got to go to the city anyway, and I’ll drop you off.”

“I can’t be late, Bill,” she said. “Al will be calling in, and I have a thousand things to do.”

“Don’t worry about Al,” he insisted. “I’ll be quick.” He turned and headed toward the courtroom, the papers in hand, and with a smile he called over to the men, pleasantly, “Good morning, gentlemen.”

They looked up, startled, and two of them replied, less pleasantly, “Good morning.”

Bill was not detained for more than five minutes at the clerk’s counter, and after he left the courtroom he put his arm around Jane and escorted her down the corridor toward the elevator, pausing only to say, “Good-bye, gentlemen.” There was no reply. The trip from California had been worth it.

A man was waiting for Bill at the elevator, and another sat waiting in a car outside the court building. They drove over the bridge to Manhattan and left Jane at Krieger’s office on lower Broadway; then they drove uptown.

Bill had little fear of being followed and fired upon by his enemies in New York on this sunny spring day because he and they knew that they were undoubtedly being closely observed by government agents and detectives. Dozens of investigators were now assigned to the Banana War in an attempt to solve the murders and shootings of the past three years; and because of this tight police surveillance, the men knew it was unwise to carry guns, and they recently had recognized a temporary unofficial truce.

One of the vexations of membership in a declining and divided Mafia family was that the FBI and police maximized their efforts on it. as they minimized the pressure on the stronger organizations—the weaker ones offered greater opportunities for infiltration, arrests, ultimate convictions. A declining organization had many unhappy, disillusioned members who felt betrayed and frantic, and such men might be converted into informers if the right deal was offered by law enforcement authorities.

Bill Bonanno did not know how many men could be trusted among the Bonanno loyalists in New York at this point, a group of indeterminate size under an old friend of his father’s named Natale Evola, who had been an usher at the elder Bonanno’s wedding in 1931. The Di Gregorio—Sciacca faction and a third group said to be under Philip Rastelli were also of uncertain size and were equally determined to remain out of sight and out of the headlines during this period that they regarded as a government inquisition. And so Bill felt very secure after leaving the courthouse in Brooklyn and crossing the bridge into Manhattan, believing that he was undoubtedly being followed by an unmarked government car that he would not try to avoid. Since he had no intention of meeting with any of his father’s men on this trip and since the few friends and relatives that he would be seeing in New York could not be linked to the Mafia, he had nothing to hide and little to fear if he remained cautious and alert.

Parking the car in a garage near Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, Bill Bonanno walked into Altman’s department store, where he had promised to buy a dress that Rosalie saw advertised in Sunday’s
New York Times
. He had in his pocket the advertisement that Rosalie had clipped, and also her attached note that read: “Size 12-M, blue-orange print, V-neck, long sleeves. Sixth floor at Altman’s in Misses Dress Dept.”

On the sixth floor, Bill Bonanno was greeted by a perfumed atmosphere and dim blue light and the sight of mini-skirted salesgirls standing among the racks of clothes. The decor resembled a discotheque, with multicolored lights racing along one wall and rock’n’roll music blaring from a large stereo jukebox in the corner. Bill paused momentarily, then walked slowly toward the jukebox. He studied it for a second, bent down, and looked along the sides to see if it bore a label that would mark it as one of Thomas Eboli’s machines. Eboli had jukeboxes in Greenwich Village bars and in several places uptown, but apparently, he had not yet made it with the Misses Dress Department at Altman’s.

As Bill turned around, he saw a middle-aged woman standing behind him, glaring at him through her rhinestone harlequin-framed glasses, and she said to him curtly, “May I help you, young man?” It’s just my luck, he thought—in a store filled with sexy young salesgirls, I attract the one old battle-ax who has been at Altman’s since the First World War.

“My wife wants this dress,” he said, handing the woman the advertisement. “She wants it in a size 12-M and blue-orange print.” The woman took the advertisement, and within a few moments she returned with a flimsy garment draped over her arm.

“This is it,” she said, holding it up for Bill to see. It was really a dress with pants, which Bill had not realized, and he did not think that Rosalie would look well in it. It was an imitation Pucci print, and the whole outfit looked to Bill like a pair of pajamas; but he told the woman to wrap it, and he was mildly offended by the direct manner in which the woman replied: “Would you pay me first, young man?”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Store policy,” she said.

He reached into his pocket and handed her two twenty-dollar bills and watched her disappear with the money and the dress. As he stood waiting he thought it odd that he was supposed to trust her when she obviously did not trust him; she had now gone off with his money and the merchandise presumably to record the sale and wrap the garment, leaving him with no proof that he had paid her, and while he realized that he was stretching a point, he was nonetheless irritated by the woman’s attitude. If he were dealing in
his
world, he knew that he would never have parted with the money until he had the merchandise in hand; it would have been a simultaneous exchange. But as he thought more about it, he suspected that he was exaggerating the saleswoman’s suspicion of him. Or perhaps he was reacting automatically to salespeople, remembering his unhappy experience with Torrillo’s credit card at Bloom’s store in Tucson. He stopped his brooding when he saw the woman returning with the package; and as he left Altman’s he decided that the next time Rosalie wanted a dress, she would buy it herself.

It was mild and sunny along the sidewalk, and since Bill had little to do for the next hour he decided to leave the car in the garage and to take a leisurely stroll through midtown Manhattan, which he had not done in years, and which if he had tried to do a year ago would surely have been suicidal. Although it was not quite noon, he could see that the early-lunch crowd was moving toward luncheonettes and restaurants, and there were people standing at the curb waving and whistling at cabs. There was a pace and pressure about New York that did not exist in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or any other city, and although he had always hated New York, he was at this moment pleased to be back, briefly, knowing that tomorrow he would be gone. He was now a tourist, and as he walked up Fifth Avenue he recited the tourists’ favorite cliché, hoping that he would never have to live here again, not as a resident nor as an inmate in a prison.

Everything about New York was more difficult, more expensive, more exhausting. The town was tougher on everyone—cabbies and truckmen, businessmen and waiters, secretaries, and cops and gangsters. People came to New York looking for big money and big deals, but they usually died early as a result—it was a killer town, no less lethal to cops than robbers. Bill guessed that the life expectancy of the mafiosi in New York was less than in other places; those men lucky enough to escape the bullets usually died prematurely of heart ailments. Bill had recently read that Thomas Eboli, fifty-eight, reputed aspirant to Vito Genovese’s title, had collapsed at a crime hearing and had been taken by stretcher to a hospital, and Bill was almost willing to bet that there was not a don or underboss approaching sixty in New York who was not suffering from a heart condition or from high blood pressure. Whenever the police searched Mafia officers for concealed weapons, they usually discovered instead small bottles of heart-stimulant pills. Carlo Gambino had a chronic cardiac ailment, and Bill had just heard that Paul Sciacca, fifty-nine, was also suffering from heart trouble, which was one reason why Sciacca was a poor replacement for the ailing Di Gregorio. In the final analysis, it was not only the government that was bothering the Mafia—it was more the day-to-day pressure of living in New York, a pressure unknown to seventy-seven-year-old Stefano Magaddino in Buffalo, or seventy-two-year-old Zerilli in Detroit, or seventy-one-year-old Paul De Lucia in Chicago.

On Forty-second Street Bill headed west toward Times Square, and he was soon surprised to discover how many familiar buildings had been demolished or refaced in this ever-changing city. The Paramount theater, which he remembered as a boy, was gone, and he also regretted that a new building was replacing the once-elegant Astor where his wedding reception had been held.

Turning east again along Forty-second Street, heading back toward the garage, Bill noticed ah upper-story sign that identified a travel agency that was partly owned by an old friend, and he decided to go up and say hello. In past years his friend had often tried to interest Bill in certain propositions in the Caribbean and elsewhere, but Bill had always been too busy. But now he was curious whether the offers were still open—in fact, he was more curious about the offers than about specific proposals, realizing that because of the court restrictions on his travel he was really in no position to accept anything; and yet he still wanted to hear what his friend had to say, to know whether or not he was still a friend.

But after he had approached the receptionist, he was told that his friend was out of the city and would not return until the following week. Bill was disappointed but did not show it.

“Is there any message?” she asked.

“Tell him that Bill from California was here, and I’ll get in touch with him later.”

“Any last name, sir?” she asked, writing on a pad.

“It’s not necessary,” he said. “Just say that Bill stopped by. From California. He’ll know.”

The receptionist smiled at him, seemed to be impressed by his suntan, his suit, his manner, the mystery of his name. Bill from California. He smiled back and left.

Less than an hour later, he was in Brooklyn, in another world. The buildings were lower, the sky larger, there was no glamour or mystique about the place—it was a has-been borough of old whites and young blacks, of brownstones gone to seed, and of women sitting in rooms with the shades down, watching television in the middle of the afternoon.

Bill stopped the car in front of a corner brick house on DeKalb Avenue where his uncle and aunt Di Pasquale lived, and he walked up the path to knock on a double-locked door. His aunt Marion, after peeking from behind a curtain, let him into the living room, where his uncle, a slim and distinguished-looking man of about seventy, sat in a soft chair watching television. The uncle stood, quickly put on his jacket, and left with Bill, pleased to be getting out of the house on this sunny afternoon; he was grateful to his nephew for having called and suggested a ride out to Long Island.