Honor Thy Father (43 page)

A moment later, Joseph Jr. walked into the living room, followed by a tall handsome young man with long blond hair named David Hill, Jr. He was from San Antonio, was twenty-two, and had been a friend of Joseph’s for more than a year. Hill’s father was a retired army general, a war hero. But the son was a connoisseur of art who had studied in Paris, was a young man with strong views on politics and hypocrisy in America who shared with the Bonannos a conviction that the family had been much maligned in the press. When Bill Bonanno had first met David Hill during the previous summer he had been skeptical, concerned that his brother Joseph, who in the past had attracted many unusual and interesting friends, had on this occasion possibly attracted an FBI protégé or a spy of some sort. But Bill soon altered his thinking, being guided largely by his father, who took an instant liking to the young Texan, admiring his independence and intelligence and appreciating his friendship at a time when friends were rare. Now David Hill, Jr., stayed at the Bonanno home, and he occasionally drove the elder Bonanno around town on errands, accompanying him and assisting him almost in the manner of an aide-de-camp. He received no financial remuneration for this, being in fact quite wealthy—which young Joseph confirmed after a visit to Texas in Hill’s company—but Hill claimed to be gaining something of value from his closeness to Joseph Bonanno, namely an insight into an unusual mind, a broadening awareness of life from another point of view.

When the FBI became aware of Hill’s living in the Bonanno home, word was quickly sent to the Hill family in San Antonio, and the young man himself was asked to appear at the FBI office in Tucson. When David Hill arrived, he met with an agent who expressed shock and dismay at Hill’s choice of friends, but said that Hill might be able to compensate for his faulty judgment by assisting the federal government in compiling data about the habits of the Bonanno family. When Hill refused, and when he emphatically stated that he would not reconsider the FBI’s proposition, the agent proceeded to insult him, calling him a disgrace to his family and to his country, adding that young Hill would never be able to hold a position with the United States government, a threat that Hill accepted without appearing to be distraught.

David Hill, Jr., and Joseph Bonanno, Jr., were sitting in the Bonanno living room, equally at home, listening to the elder Bonanno speaking softly on a wide range of subjects, and the elder Bonanno continued to speak freely about his life and times throughout dinner. Dinner was not served in the dining room that adjoined the living room, but rather at the long table in the sun porch to the rear of the house. Mrs. Bonanno did the serving, assisted by a middle-aged Tucson woman who was a close friend of hers, while Joseph Bonanno, encouraged by David Hill’s interest, spoke elaborately about his boyhood background, about the history of Sicily, and about his travels to Paris, his recollections of the United States during the thirties when there was more individual freedom than there was now in the sixties, the era of big government. David Hill interrupted freely to express his own opinions, or to ask for a larger explanation from the elder Bonanno, which Bonanno did with apparent satisfaction.

While Bill had heard all these stories before, he was aware of how animated his father seemed in retelling them now to someone new, an outsider with long blond hair who had a rapport with Bill’s father that was not obstructed by their difference in age or the complications of a father-son relationship.

Mrs. Bonanno, standing to unset the table and warm the coffee, seemed pleased that her husband was enjoying the discussion; and young Joseph complimented his friend’s ability to put into words what he, Joseph, felt—and Joseph was also privately satisfied with his own role in introducing his father to David Hill, one of the few things that he had done recently that had not resulted in a summons.

After dinner, throughout which Bill had been rather quiet, cheese and fruit were passed around, and also brandy. The elder Bonanno remained seated at the table for another hour, even after the dishes and silverware had been removed. He was in an expansive mood, wanting to talk for hours, and Bill thought how lonely it must have been for his father during the past winter in Tucson. His father had been restricted to the companionship of a few men, and if he left the house he was usually followed by the police. He could not take a short vacation trip out of town, for if he requested it the government might seek to counter the doctor’s opinion that Joseph Bonanno’s heart ailment and the damage that might arise from additional tension justified Bonanno’s failure to appear before juries in New York or elsewhere. He was still free on $150,000 bond on the three-year-old federal charge of obstructing justice, although he was essentially a prisoner in his home, and Bill could appreciate how diverting an evening such as this was for his father.

Still, as the discussion at the table continued and as David Hill remained deeply engrossed in whatever the elder Bonanno was saying, Bill could not conceal his restlessness and fatigue. He was beginning to feel the effect of the long motor trip, and he also complained of a mild toothache. He excused himself briefly and walked into the living room where the television was on; he walked out to the front lawn, looking up at the stars and the promise of a clear day tomorrow. He returned later, and took his seat to the right of his father at the table, listening absently for another half hour. His hand rested on a brandy bottle in front of him; and soon, with the nail of his right thumb, he began to scratch into the red wax seal on the neck of the bottle. He did not seem to be conscious of it, but his nail was picking determinedly at the seal, cutting into it, chiseling it down, and tiny pieces of hard red wax began to fall along the tablecloth.

His father continued to talk, and nobody seemed to notice what Bill’s hand was doing, except his mother. She stood in the doorway to the kitchen, holding a tray of glasses, watching him for several moments. She frowned slightly, but said nothing until she finally got his attention. Then she spoke softly, directly, her words intended only for his hearing.

“Do you want a scissor,” she asked, “or a knife?”

Bill slept late the next day, and when he woke up and went in for breakfast he discovered that his father had waited to have breakfast with him. His father asked about his toothache, seeming concerned and conciliatory.

Later, with Joseph Jr. and David out for the afternoon, Bill spoke with his father without interruption. They dealt with many of the things they had been unable to discuss during the months they had not seen one another, including Bill’s court case over the credit card, which would probably go before the jury in the fall. Bill relayed one of his lawyer’s opinions that if convicted on all counts of mail fraud, perjury, and conspiracy, he could expect a minimum sentence of ten years in jail. He thought that that was a heavy price to pay for having spent not much more than $2,000 with Torrillo’s credit card; but the lawyer had reminded Bill that the government had a strong case and that things might even be worse if Bill took the witness stand in his own defense. The government prosecutor could then interrogate him about subjects other than the credit card incident, and Bill’s reluctance to answer could make him seem even more sinister before the jury. It was Bill’s assumption now that his lawyers would probably not put him on the stand.

The elder Bonanno strongly urged his son not to concern himself at this time with such eventualities; things often took care of themselves in time, and the government’s case might not really be as strong as it seemed. It would have been unfortunate if the case were before the jury now, with public opinion so strongly aroused about organized crime—it was reminiscent of Mussolini’s witch-hunt against alleged mafiosi in the 1920s in Sicily. But in six or eight months, there might be a swing back to more rational thinking, and less flailing of the dead horse that the Mafia had become.

As for the Tucson investigation of who had bombed the Bonanno house, there was not much that the elder Bonanno could say that Bill did not already know or suspect. They both knew that it was not a Mafia job. And yet it was somehow organized and well planned, as had also been the bombing of the Licavoli ranch, Notaro’s house, the wig salon where Mrs. Charles Battaglia had worked, and the others. Bill’s guess was that a citizens committee of vigilantes, or some kind of political agency, was sponsoring the destruction; but aside from knowing about the mysterious sedans registered to the Deluxe Importing Company, he had made no further progress—and neither he, his father, nor any of their friends could risk pursuing the bombers. They had to leave it to the FBI and police, for if they became involved it might make matters worse; it was perhaps precisely what their adversaries were seeking—a confrontation with the Mafia or a plot portending a scandal or newspaper publicity charging mafiosi with threatening the lives of innocent citizens.

What the Bonannos wanted least in Tucson now was publicity, which was why Bill chose to remain indoors during the day for the entire weekend. He kept the car locked in the garage, did not even stand near the windows during daylight hours. He was fairly certain that the local police were unaware of his presence; if they had known of it, he was sure that they would have invented an excuse to visit the house and ask questions, and then there would have probably been stories in the press speculating on this visit, implying that within the house a secret conclave, with far-reaching underworld implications, was being held.

There were no stories that weekend, but the publicity that the Bonannos had successfully avoided would reach them six weeks later.

O
N
J
UNE
10, 1969,
MANY OF THE INNER SECRETS, IN
TRIGUES, and events leading up to the Banana War—together with a preponderance of data and gossip about the Mafia in general—were revealed by the FBI, which between 1961 and 1965 had been recording private conversations through the use of hidden microphones placed in three locations frequented by alleged mafiosi. One of the mafiosi was a rather jaunty man of fifty-nine with wavy gray hair named Samuel Rizzo De Cavalcante, who was the boss of a sixty-man “family” in New Jersey and who, in the interest of peace and harmony in the underworld, served as the Mafia national commission’s messenger in its troubled negotiations with the Bonanno organization between 1964 and 1965.

It was a thankless task at times, and Samuel De Cavalcante’s frustrations in the 2,300-page FBI log testify to how his hopes were usually unfulfilled and how finally he himself realized the futility of his efforts. But it was also evident that De Cavalcante, an obscure New Jersey don who had limited prestige in the national society, truly enjoyed his mission, was challenged by its possibilities of success, liked to brag to his underlings about his being on the inside with the top dons, even as a courier, and did not mind shuttling back and forth between New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to meet secretly with such commission members as Joseph Zerilli of Detroit and Angelo Bruno of Philadelphia as well as with Bill Bonanno and other representatives of the loyalist and separatist groups.

By all standards of the underworld, and even the larger world beyond, Samuel De Cavalcante was a patient well-meaning man trying to do his duty, a man who listened for hours to the dictates of men whose words were really intended for someone else, someone who was never there, Joseph Bonanno; and yet De Cavalcante, responsive to the task, remained always available even after he knew he was wasting his time—time that he might otherwise have devoted to his plumbing business in New Jersey, to his numbers and loan-sharking and other enterprises, to the wife and children that he loved, and to the mistress that he frequently missed.

The romantic diversions of De Cavalcante, which he alluded to in the privacy of his office to confidantes or in telephone conversations, did not evade the sensitive microphones of the FBI any more than later did they evade the newspapers, the magazines, or the two paperback books that gave national circulation to his words after the FBI released them in June 1969.
The New York Times
for days gave as much space to the De Cavalcante dialogues as it did to the Ecumenical Council in Rome, gaining no doubt a higher rate of readership; and among the
Times
’s regular subscribers, none read with more interest than Joseph Bonanno, whose photograph had appeared with the first article (a rare photograph, for he was not smiling), and Bill Bonanno, who had learned for the first time what certain mafiosi were saying about him behind his back. The paperback books went into even greater detail, and it was also possible to obtain, as Bill later did, the full thirteen volumes of the FBI transcripts, which federal authorities gave to certain friends and reporters and which could be purchased for $95 at the federal courthouse in Newark.

One of the first admissions by De Cavalcante that difficulty existed in the Bonanno organization was recorded on August 31, 1964—two months before Joseph Bonanno’s disappearance. The recording was made by an electronic device emplanted somewhere on or near De Cavalcante’s desk in his office in the one-story cinder block building in Kenilworth, New Jersey, where, with a Jewish partner with whom he could speak fairly fluent Yiddish, he operated an air-conditioning and plumbing supply business. Shortly before noon on August 31, De Cavalcante was visited by one of the captains in his “family,” Joe Sferra, who was also the business agent for a hod carrier’s union in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

“I’ve been busy with the commission,” De Cavalcante complained.

“Who’s giving you problems?” Sferra asked.

“It’s nothing with us,” De Cavalcante replied. “More lousy meetings!”

“Yeah?” Sferra asked.

“They don’t want nobody to know about it,” De Cavalcante said, and he paused momentarily, as if hesitant about saying anything more even to his captain. But Sferra’s curiosity was aroused, and he asked, “So, what’s new?”

“Oh,” De Cavalcante said, “a little trouble over there, in New York.”

“New York?”

“Yeah,” De Cavalcante said. Then he told Sferra, “Close the door. Nobody’s supposed to know.”

After he closed the door, Sferra seemed to have second thoughts about wanting to pry into commission affairs, and he said, “Sam, if you don’t want to tell me you don’t have to tell me.” But Sam De Cavalcante wanted to tell him.

“It’s about Joe Bonanno’s
borgata
[family],” he said. “The commission don’t like the way he’s comporting himself.”

“The way he’s conducting himself, you mean?”

“Well, he made his son
consigliere
,” De Cavalcante explained, “and it’s been reported, the son, that he don’t show up. They [the commission] sent for him and he didn’t show up. And they want to throw [Joe Bonanno] out of the commission. So—just now they figure that the coolest place is Rhode Island. You know what I mean? It’s a pain in the neck. I feel sorry for the guy, you know. He’s not a bad guy.”

“How old is he?” Sferra asked.

“Sixty, sixty-two.”

A month later, after De Cavalcante had had unsatisfactory meetings with Bill Bonanno, John Morale, and others, De Cavalcante sat in his office telling one of his subordinates, Frank Majuri, and unknowingly also telling the hidden microphone, how difficult it was to deal with Bill Bonanno, adding that he was more fearful of the younger Bonanno than the elder.

“His son is a bedbug,” De Cavalcante said, continuing, “I had an appointment…”

“You went to see him?” Majuri cut in.

“Yeah,” De Cavalcante said, adding that he had been accompanied by Joseph Zicarelli, a Bonanno member residing in New Jersey. “They got one car in front and one in the back. I said, ‘What’s going on here? Are we being followed?’ He [Zicarelli] said, ‘No, don’t worry.’ ” But De Cavalcante realized that while en route to the meeting he was surrounded by Bonanno cars, and that Bill “made sure like I didn’t have nobody to set him up.”

Although not speaking personally to the elder Bonanno, De Cavalcante did talk to him by telephone, recalling how indignant Joseph Bonanno was that the commission was interfering in Bonanno’s family affairs and was protecting Bonanno’s disloyal captain, Gaspar Di Gregorio, from reprisals.

“ ‘Where do they come off protecting him?’ ” Bonanno is supposed to have demanded of De Cavalcante, as De Cavalcante recalled it in his office for Majuri. “ ‘This is a Cosa Nostra family!’ He’s telling me over the telephone. ‘The commission told me not to try anything with this guy [Di Gregorio] because the commission is responsible for him!’ He [Bonanno] don’t care, he thinks nobody is responsible, [Di Gregorio] belongs to
his
family…. They [the Bonanno organization] took an attitude he was thrown out of their family and that nobody should have anything to do with him, and where are they coming off protecting him…”

“Maybe the guy wasn’t wrong, right?” Majuri asked De Cavalcante.

“Who?”

“The guy they threw out,” Majuri said, quickly asking what the Bonanno man in New Jersey, Zicarelli, thought about the situation.

“He don’t think,” De Cavalcante said, explaining that Joseph Bonanno was Zicarelli’s boss. Then De Cavalcante, as if pondering the disastrous consequences that would befall the Mafia if this dispute were not settled, said “That’s all the government would want—a thing like this to happen!”

“It would be all over,” Majuri agreed. “It wouldn’t be like it was with the Gallo boys. This would be an entirely different affair now.”

“It would be,” De Cavalcante said, conjuring up global visions, “like World War III!”

It was around this period, still a month before Joseph Bonanno’s disappearance, that Sam De Cavalcante learned that the commission had lost all patience with Bonanno’s independent attitude and had voted to remove him from membership. While the FBI transcripts contain no details on whether the vote was unanimous or even whether all eight of the nine commissioners (excluding Bonanno) participated in the voting, the FBI listed as commission members in 1964 the following: Stefano Magaddino of Buffalo, Joseph Zerilli of Detroit, Angelo Bruno of Philadelphia, Sam Giancana of Chicago, Joseph Colombo of New York (who reportedly succeeded to the leadership of the Profaci-Magliocco family), Carlo Gambino of New York, Thomas Lucchese of New York, and the imprisoned Vito Genovese of New York.

While De Cavalcante was under no formal obligation to do so, he decided to inform the New Jersey-based Bonanno member, Joseph Zicarelli, of the commission’s edict mainly because he liked Zicarelli personally and because he wanted Zicarelli to start thinking quickly about his own interests.

“Joe,” De Cavalcante began, after Zicarelli had entered his office, “this is strictly between you and I.”

“Yeah?” Zicarelli said.

“If I didn’t do this,” De Cavalcante confessed, “I’d feel like a lousy bum.” Then he said, “The commission doesn’t recognize foe Bonanno as the boss any more.” Zicarelli said nothing, and De Cavalcante continued, “I don’t know what’s the matter with this guy, Joe. I done everything possible.”

As Joe Zicarelli continued to be speechless, De Cavalcante said, “Well, Joe, I’d feel bad if I didn’t tell you. Tomorrow I don’t want you to say, ‘What the hell, we’re so close and he couldn’t tell me!’… They [the commission] can’t understand why this guy’s ducking them… They respect all your people as friends of ours, but they will not recognize Joe, his son, and Johnny [Morale].”

Zicarelli seemed incredulous, repeating, “Joe, his son,
and
Johnny?”

“Yeah,” De Cavalcante said, “when they don’t recognize a boss…”

“Then all three goes,” Zicarelli finished the sentence.

“The whole three,” said De Cavalcante, but on the brighter side he explained that “the commission has no intention of hurting anybody, either. That’s most important for me to tell you.” But Zicarelli countered that Joseph Bonanno also had no intention of harming anyone, “as far as I know.”

“Well,” De Cavalcante said, “he might hurt people in his own outfit to cover up some of his story,” though he emphasized, “the commission is out to hurt no one—not even Joe Bonanno. But they don’t want no one else hurt either.”

“Who?” Zicarelli asked.

“Right in your own outfit,” De Cavalcante said, meaning Gaspar Di Gregorio and anyone choosing to follow Di Gregorio. “When Joe defies the commission,” Sam De Cavalcante went on, grandly, “he’s defying the whole world.”

It was not a simple matter for Zicarelli to suddenly accept the verdict about his boss; while Zicarelli had never been in a position to observe the Mafia hierarchy intimately, being merely a Bonanno soldier—or, as he described himself to De Cavalcante elsewhere on the FBI tape, “a lousy little peasant”—Zicarelli was aware that Joseph Bonanno had been a respected don since 1931, had been a member of the nine-man commission for several years, and it seemed odd that Bonanno would almost overnight be found unfit. Zicarelli also, though only a soldier, had been influenced by the independent style with which Bonanno had long presided as a “family” boss, being fair and personally close to the men but condoning no interference from other dons. From the formative days of the commission in 1931, following Maranzano’s murder, Bonanno had defined the commission as a peacekeeping body that should not intrude into the internal affairs of a family, and since no one had challenged his concept for more than thirty years, why anyone was seeking to do so now confused Zicarelli.

When De Cavalcante sought to explain that the commission was justified in protecting Gaspar Di Gregorio and any other family members who had defected because of the elevation of Bill Bonanno, or for other reasons, Zicarelli kept insisting that all this was an internal matter and that Joseph Bonanno was not obliged to answer for his actions to the other dons on the commission. As to De Cavalcante’s point about the elder Bonanno’s not appearing before the commission or its representatives as requested, Zicarelli noted that Gaspar Di Gregorio had been boycotting meetings of the Bonanno organization, and Zicarelli asked, “Why didn’t Gasparino [Di Gregorio] come in when all the captains assembled?”

“Well,” De Cavalcante said, “he probably had his own rights.”

“Where does this make sense, Sam—where can he have his own rights?” Zicarelli asked, citing as an example, “You’re my boss, you say ‘Come in.’ Where is my right? I don’t have no rights!” Then Zicarelli, speculating darkly about Caspar Di Gregorio’s reasons for staying away, asked, “Is he afraid he’s gonna get hit? This guy [Di Gregorio] gotta be guilty of something! Why didn’t he come?…He was told! From what I understand, he was given all the extensions in the world, that nobody meant no harm or nothing. There was just some misunderstanding and they’re holding a meeting. The guy’s a captain! What kind of example is he?”

“Well,” De Cavalcante said.

“Right or wrong, you go!” Zicarelli said, quickly. “I guarantee you one thing—this guy here is my boss. Right or wrong, if he calls me—I’m going! If I’m gonna get hit—the hell with it! I get hit and that’s the end of it. It don’t make no sense to me!”

“This guy refuses to go, right?” De Cavalcante asked, seeking to clarify Di Gregorio’s position.

“Yeah.”

“And he was put on the shelf.”

“Temporarily,” Zicarelli corrected.

“All right,” De Cavalcante said, “so how about Joe? Joe knows better than this. This guy [Di Gregorio] is only a
capo
. Joe is supposed to be chief justice—one of the chief justices.”

“Fine,” Zicarelli said.