Honor Thy Father (33 page)
Authors: Gay Talese
None of Bonanno’s men or Licavoli’s offered any comment on McGinnis’s theory, although they did know at this time that the bombing missions were being directed not by mafiosi or thrill-seeking youths but rather by a private agency of some sort whose personnel included a dark-haired woman. It was Bill Bonanno who discovered this toward the end of the summer after one of his men, equipped with a walkie-talkie and hiding behind a bush one night, saw a slow-moving car with its lights offheading up East Elm Street. On receiving the warning, Bill ran out of the house with his shotgun, crouched in the shadows, and waited as a cream-colored 1967 Chevrolet sedan came closer. The car almost slowed to a stop in front of the Bonanno home, and, after the window opened on the passenger’s side, Bill saw the woman toss out a package that rolled under one of the cars that was parked at the curb.
Because it was a woman, Bill did not shoot; but he did get a look at the car’s license number and a quick glimpse of the woman and man as they drove away. He waited, flat against the ground, expecting the package to explode at any second. When it did not, he jumped to his feet and dashed into the house. He waited with the other men for several minutes, but it still did not go off.
Later one of the neighbors on East Elm Street saw the package, picked it up, and, without looking inside to examine its contents, brought it to the Bonanno’s front door and presented it to Mrs. Bonanno. She accepted it with thanks, saying that she had probably dropped it out of her shopping bag as she returned from the market earlier. Inside, bound with tape, were six sticks of dynamite. The fuse, apparently lit in great haste, had burned out too early to cause detonation. One of the men disposed of the dynamite outside the house, and no report was made to the police.
But on the following day, after checking the license number with a Bonanno source in the motor vehicle bureau in Phoenix, it was determined that license number JBW-110 registered a 1967 Chevrolet sedan owned by the Deluxe Importing Company of 5001 North 40th Street in Phoenix. Bill sent his brother, Joseph, to Phoenix to learn what he could about the company, but his brother returned late that afternoon from the 260-mile round trip complaining that there was no such address in Phoenix. All that he could find in the approximate area was a vacant lot.
This was when Bill began to suspect that a private agency was behind the bombings; and he became even more strongly convinced of this a week later when Peter Notaro called to say that, while having a beer at Gus & Andy’s Bar, he overheard two strangers knowledgeably discussing the bombings, and he noticed that the car they were driving was a cream-colored 1967 Chevrolet. However, the license number was JBW-109, one number lower than the one Bill had seen.
After checking this number with the source in Phoenix, Bill was told that it, too, was registered to the Deluxe Importing Company, but the address was given as 4008 North 48th Street. Bill again sent his brother to Phoenix to see what was at that address, and when Joseph returned he reported that the only thing he saw near the address was Camelback Mountain.
Still later, Bill learned from his friend in the license bureau that there were a series of license numbers registered to the Deluxe Importing Company, and Bill no longer had any doubts that he was facing formidable opposition. He suspected that the Deluxe Importing Company was a front for the CIA or FBI. But both he and his father agreed that they should do nothing with the information at this time; they should remain calm, alert, and try not to overreact, although that was admittedly difficult under the circumstances.
A few weeks before, in late September, Bill, apprehensive and suspicious, had pointed a gun at a man who sat in a car parked outside Peter Notaro’s home. The man was a policeman in an unmarked car. Bill was arrested. Freed on $300 bond, Bill returned home, furious at what he regarded as police harassment; and then a week later he was arrested again, this time for speeding. Bill emphatically denied the charge, telling the policeman that he had been driving cautiously because he was aware that the policeman had been following him for several miles. But when the case came up in city court in late November, Bill Bonanno was found guilty by Magistrate Hyman Copins, who fined him $ 15 and said that Bonanno had been so intent on being “tailed” that he had failed to pay attention to the traffic signs and to a second police vehicle that was following him and clocking his speed.
Bill’s problems with the law became exceedingly worse in December when he learned that he was being charged in a federal indictment with having stolen Don A. Torrillo’s Diners’ Club card to finance the trip that Bill had made to the West during the previous February with his uncle Di Pasquale and Peter Notaro. The indictment accused Bill Bonanno and Notaro of conspiracy, perjury, and fifty counts of mail fraud. The multiple charges of mail fraud had been compiled because each charge slip bearing Torrillo’s name, forged by Bonanno or Notaro, traveled by mail between the locale of the business transaction and the Diners’ Club office that paid the bills. A government spokesman was quoted in the newspapers as saying that if Bonanno were found guilty of each count, he could get up to 220 years in prison and fines of $65,000; and Notaro could receive 215 years and fines of $63,000. The late Sam Perrone, who had obtained the card from Don Torrillo and had assurred Bill that Torrillo had willingly agreed to its use, was cited in the indictment as a coconspirator.
Bill was depressed but not surprised by the news. When his lawyers had been unable to reach Torrillo after Perrone’s murder and when Bill had learned that Torrillo was conferring with detectives, Bill sensed that his legal position was precarious. All in all, 1968 had been a very bad year. He had lost his Arizona tax case and owed the government about $60,000; he had almost no chance of regaining his Arizona property or his home in East Meadow; he was involved in a war in New York, bombings in Arizona, and was facing a federal case in which the newspapers claimed he could get 220 years. It was so preposterous it was laughable, except it was not very funny to him.
Among other developments in 1968 was the report from New York that Frank Mari, Di Gregorio’s triggerman, the man who had allegedly led the fusillade on Troutman Street and had accomplished the murder of Sam Perrone, had suddenly vanished in mid-September with his bodyguard and another man, and now all three were presumed to be dead.
THE FAMILY
T
HE RED RANCH-STYLE HOUSE THAT
R
OSALIE
B
ONANNO
rented in San Jose was not unlike the one that she had left in East Meadow, but her new neighbors in California seemed to be more friendly and open-minded, not the type that would ostracize her and the children because of the notoriety attached to the Bonanno name. At first she suspected that they did not associate her with the name in the headlines; but then, shortly after she had settled in San Jose, the local newspapers reported, prominently, that Bill Bonanno, who with his wife and children was renting a house at 1419 Lamore Drive, had been charged with stealing and illegally using a Diners’ Club card, and was believed to be engaged in gangland activities in the East and West. Rosalie was initially worried by the publicity, fearing that the short-term lease on the house might now be canceled, that her children’s new friends might turn on them, and that the teen-age girl who lived a few doors away, and had been babysitting, might be prohibited by her parents from returning.
But none of these things happened, and it was not because the people in San Jose were unaware of who she was; in fact on the evening after the newspaper articles had appeared, Rosalie attended a class in computer programming that she had just joined, and the students asked her questions about it, displaying not disapproval, as she would have expected, but curiosity and friendship toward her. She was surprised and pleased.
She enjoyed the computer class, which she was attending on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, not only because she had long felt the need to get out of the house and meet new people, but because she was now finally preparing herself for a career. If her husband was to be convicted on the credit card case, a case that would surely come to trial within the year, she might have to help support herself and the children after Bill had gone to jail. Computer programmers were in demand in the San Jose area, a busy center of modern corporations—IBM, Ford, General Electric’s atomic power department, Lockheed’s Polaris missile project, and several other companies with defense contracts and ties to the Pentagon. It was an ultranew, almost futuristic community that had been built over what had once been a Spanish pueblo, later a dried-fruit-packing center at the foot of the San Francisco peninsula; but now it was populated by electronics technicians, nuclear physicists, engineers, aircraft workers; and at night, as Rosalie drove along the highway between San Jose and San Francisco, she could see large glass-walled factories with bright lights glowing in rooms without people, and she could imagine the soft clicking sounds of busy computers.
The wide highways that she used were newly paved and without the cracks and potholes that had characterized the roads in New York; the commuter traffic in the late afternoon seemed to consist entirely of new cars, and the ranch-style houses that lined the quiet streets back from the highways were freshly painted and equipped with the latest modern gadgets, fixtures, and appliances. Rosalie wanted to own such a house, and recently she had visited sample houses in a new development and had been awed by the freshness and glow of everything she had seen—the polished brass doorknobs, the aluminum sash windows, the sliding glass doors to the patio and pool, the elegant modern furniture with colorful cushions that had filled her with a sense of opulence and comfort. She had also been amazed, while walking from house to house along the sample block, that no guards were standing by to prevent visitors from damaging or stealing the transportable furniture, the silverware, china, and delicately shaped wine glasses that she had seen on a dining room table set for a dinner party of eight—she remembered leaning over and picking up one of the glasses, half expecting it to be attached by wire or otherwise linked to the table; but it was not. The linen napkins, the brass ashtrays, the pans and pots in the kitchen also were free to be handled, as were the lamps on the tables in the living room and everything else in the house. This would not have been the case in New York, she knew, recalling a visit she had made years ago to a sample house in Long Island and discovering that the lamps were bolted to the floors, that every movable object was somehow secured to the floors or tables, and that the rugs and furnishings were covered with transparent plastic.
The people that Rosalie had seen in this computerized community in California, those she had observed in shopping centers or at the McDonald Hamburger and Kentucky Fried Chicken stands that she visited with the children on Saturday afternoons, also seemed to radiate a special freshness and health; they smiled often, displaying good teeth, and there was never a whiff of garlic on their breath. Rosalie had finally arrived in a portion of America that seemed right out of the television commercials—it was Reynolds-wrapped, polished with Johnson Wax, filmed in Kodacolor; it all seemed tidy and tradition free. And although no one seemed very rich or ambitious, they gave the appearance of contentment as they lived peacefully in their new houses, greeted their new neighbors, and drove their new cars each morning to work in industries that were geared for the preservation of big business, the conquest of outer space, and the logistics of international war. It was a rather odd place for Rosalie to be awaiting her husband’s return from the feudal world of his father.
Bill left Arizona after the bombings had subsided and returned to San Jose in time for Christmas, 1968; and he remained there through the next few months. It rained during most of February, but the California experience continued to please Rosalie, and for the first time in many years she saw her husband drive a car without bodyguards, a sure sign of change.
He seemed moody and restless, however, and he had a calendar of court appearances confronting him in 1969, meaning that he had to remain close to home in anticipation of his attorney’s call notifying him of the time and place. Since the courts in New York and Arizona never gave Bill much advance warning and since he was usually given a maximum of forty-eight hours in which to get there if he did not wish to forfeit bail, he was kept constantly on edge and could never make plans.
Among other things, he would have to stand trial in Arizona for having pointed a gun at the police officer who was parked outside Notaro’s house, and he would probably also be summoned to testify about the bombings when and if the investigators ever discovered who was responsible. So far he was displeased with the progress made in the bombing inquiry; the FBI’s customary vigilance in prosecuting crime seemed a bit slow in this instance, since the agency had possibly discovered what he already knew—the Mafia was not involved. But aside from the fact that he had traced the license plates to the mysterious Deluxe Importing Company and had seen the woman toss the dynamite in front of his father’s house, Bill had been unable to learn anything more about the Arizona bombings in the last two months.
In New York, Bill was due to make further appearances before the grand jury that was still delving into the Troutman Street shootings, the Banana War, and organized crime in general; and he also knew that sooner or later he would have to go to trial on the credit card case, a subject that he preferred not to think about. From his daily reading of
The New York Times
, which he purchased at a newsstand not far from his sister’s home in Atherton, and from the clippings that someone in New York mailed him occasionally from
The Daily News
and
Newsday
, he could see that the editorial writers were still depicting the Mafia as the main corruptor of society, that the federal government was appropriating large sums of money for the fight on organized crime, and that the smalltime mafiosi were struggling as usual, shooting at one another in the street and attempting to scratch out a living.
The FBI announced the arrest of three alleged Bonanno soldiers in connection with the armed hijacking of two trailer trucks loaded with $120,000 worth of cigarettes and other merchandise, and a later search of the suspects’ homes uncovered a high explosive bomb and 2,000 rounds of ammunition for rifles, pistols, and shotguns. The death from natural causes of seventy-seven-year-old Matteo Di Gregorio, brother of the ailing Gaspar Di Gregorio, was also given wide coverage in the press, and among the 800 mourners in Lindenhurst, Long Island, were several plainclothesmen and agents who claimed to recognize more than twenty major Mafia figures. The most prominent among them was Carlo Gambino, whose family of more than 700 members was now said to be the largest in New York and in the nation; and the police also spotted men they believed to be affiliated with the Colombo family, the Stefano Magaddino family, and—Bill was not surprised to read—-John Morale.
The latest casualty in the continuing Banana War was identified as one of Di Gregorio’s men—Thomas Zummo, twenty-nine, who the police said died in a blaze of gunfire on February 6, at about 5:00
A.M.
as he entered the lobby of his girl friend’s apartment house in Queens. His friend, a model, notified the police moments after she heard the shooting, but Zummo apparently died instantly, having been hit by four bullets with five others stuck in the lobby walls. A week later, Bill read that Vito Genovese, seventy-one, had just died of a heart ailment at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.
Genovese, who had begun a fifteen-year sentence in 1960 for narcotics smuggling, would have been eligible for parole in March 1970. He had been transferred to the medical center from the federal prison at Leavenworth two weeks ago, and there was now considerable speculation in the press as to Genovese’s successor, the three most likely candidates being Jerry Catena, sixty-seven, the alleged acting boss during Genovese’s imprisonment; Michele Miranda, seventy-two, the family’s
consiglieri;
and Thomas Eboli, fifty-eight, a onetime prizefight manager who in 1952, after his fighter Rocky Costellani had been ruled knocked out, had jumped into the ring and hit the referee. This triumvirate was said to be directing the Genovese family at present, but there was a fourth contender who might seize control, according to a Mafia expert named Ralph Salerno, a former New York City policeman and currently a consultant to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. This fourth individual, whom Salerno described as “young and ambitious,” was Salvatore (Bill) Bonanno.
Reading this in the San Jose
Mercury
, which had gotten it from the New York wire services, Bill was almost flattered but at the same time irritated: he knew that Salerno’s naivete could cause him additional trouble once he arrived in New York. He knew, as Salerno should have known, that he had absolutely no influence with Genovese’s men; and, indeed, Bill had reason to wonder at this time if he had any influence with his
own
men. Nevertheless, Salerno’s statement might be believed by a few of Genovese’s unhappy triggermen in New York—in this current state of confusion in the underworld,
anything
might seem plausible; and the last thing that Bill wanted to do was to arouse more envy and resentment among the men in the street.
Still he could not help but be affected by the status accorded him by the Mafia expert Salerno; it was something that Bill might even be able to trade on in this secret society where status, power, and the illusion of power were intertwined, flaunted, fought over. During the last year Bill had become sensitive to newspaper reports emphasizing the deterioration of the Bonanno organization and his own decline, and it had occurred to him recently that in the past two years he had not been asked by any relative or friend to serve as their children’s godfather. This meant nothing and everything to him, for it symbolized the esteem in which he had once been held by other people, deservedly or undeservedly, and was no longer. And yet he knew that in this shifting, unstable little society of which he was a part, his status could rise overnight, could change on the basis of such public comments by men like Ralph Salerno.
Already Bill had sensed the influence of Salerno’s words on the men who visited the house earlier in the day to say hello and to ask if there was anything that they could do for him. These men had known the elder Bonanno and had been helpful to Rosalie after she had moved to San Jose with the children, but they had not stopped by in several weeks. Now they had returned, interrupting his breakfast on this Saturday with their good cheer and supplicant manner and the affection they showed the children in the living room. As they waited for Bill to finish breakfast, they sat watching the children playing with plastic airplanes and rockets, and Bill heard his daughter Felippa telling them that when she became older she was going to work as an airline stewardess. Tory, Bill’s six-year-old son, announced to the men that he planned to become an astronaut—or a dentist.
“A dentist?” one of the men repeated.
“Yes,” said Tory. “My uncle Greg’s a dentist, and he knows a lot.”
“Well, your father knows a lot too,” the man said.
“Yes,” Tory agreed, “but he doesn’t know the square root of ten.”
“Yes he does,” said Charles, the eldest son, as Felippa quickly agreed.
“Well,” Tory said, “he isn’t a dentist.”
“What is your father then?” the man asked. In the breakfast room, Bill stopped eating, listened carefully.
“He’s a driver,” Tory said.
“A
driver?
”
“Yes, he drives a car.”
“He does more than that,” the man said, egging Tory on.
“He watches television and he drives,” Tory said with finality, as the men laughed. Bill was also amused, but not entirely. He thought it very coincidental that the subject of his occupation should be discussed by his children at a time when he, too, had been giving considerable thought as to how he would or could explain his life to them. Sooner or later, particularly if he went to jail for a long term, he would attempt to explain himself to his children, which was something that his own father had never done with him. Bill recalled that he had been in his teens before he had understood why his father had been treated with such formality and respect. Before he understood this Bill had thought of his father as merely a successful businessman, the owner of a cheese factory in Wisconsin, a laundry in New York, a dairy farm upstate, land in Arizona. Would it have made any difference if he had known the “truth” about his father earlier than he did? Bill doubted it. He had been magnetized by his father, would have followed him through hell, and when he finally had perceived the full range of his father’s power he had been even more impressed and proud. But Bill did not expect to be that persuasive with his own children—he would never be the towering figure to them that his father had been to him; times had changed, the dynasty was disintegrating, the insularity of Italian family life would most likely not survive the third generation, which was probably a good thing for his children. Bill remembered how angry he had become the other night when, while Rosalie was in computer class, he had returned home to be told by the baby-sitter that the children had behaved badly; and he had immediately announced that they would be punished—no toys or television watching for two days. But later, after they had gone to sleep, he wondered what right he really had to tell them anything. He thought that perhaps the less they listened to him, the better off” they would be. He was not sure that he really believed this, but the thought had occurred to him, briefly, an infrequent acknowledgment of disquieting self-doubt; and now again, as he overheard the conversation in the living room, he wondered about his children and was curious to know their thoughts about him, what they suspected, what they knew, what they would admit to knowing.