Authors: Gay Talese
She did not telephone Bill in the morning, not wanting to talk to her father-in-law or whoever else might answer; she waited until the afternoon and called the warehouse and trucking company on Leonard Street in Brooklyn that was jointly owned by Bill and Sam Perrone. It was where Bill received messages and was sometimes reachable.
Perrone answered and was as cordial as usual; and after a pause during which he went to get Bill, Perrone returned to say, apologetically, that Bill did not want to talk to her. Rosalie became almost hysterical, pleading, telling Perrone that it was an emergency concerning the children. Perrone left the phone again, and after a few moments Bill was on the other end. He sounded sullen and irritable. She had left him, he stated formally, and added that insofar as he was concerned she could stay away forever. Rosalie began to cry, imploring him to consider the children’s condition, and after several minutes of reasoning and beseeching, he finally agreed to come to Long Beach to take the children to a doctor. But she could not return to East Meadow right away, he quickly added; he had had all the locks changed on the house, and he would arrange for her to stay at a motel with the children until he could properly prepare his father for her return.
Rosalie was stunned by the remark, too confused and infuriated to reply. After he had hung up, and as she packed the few belongings she had and awaited his arrival, she sat on the edge of the bed feeling humiliated. His logic was absurd, she thought, it was nauseating—first he turned her home life into a private hell, and now he wanted her to linger in limbo for a while until she had paid a kind of penance! And his
father
had to be properly prepared for
her
return. What did his father have to do with all of this? And in what manner was he to be prepared? It was as if she, a fallen angel, a sullied soul, had to be decontaminated before regaining her privileged position as the cook and bottlewasher. The Bonannos, she thought, scornfully, are simply unbelievable.
When Bill arrived he looked pale and fatigued, in need of a shave. Though he was kindly with the children he was cool toward her. He handed her $250 and told her that he had made reservations for her and the children at a motel on Hempstead Turnpike, not far from their home, adding that she should take the children to see a doctor and that he would let her know when she could return to the house. He was obviously preoccupied, and Rosalie did not press him, did not argue or ask questions, knowing that to do so at this time would probably make things worse.
The motel, which had a swimming pool, was comfortable and bright, and the children seemed to enjoy staying there. Joseph’s condition improved, and within a week Bill came to bring them home. He seemed more relaxed now, and whatever trepidation Rosalie had with regard to the reception of her father-in-law quickly ended when he greeted her at the door as naturally and warmly as if she had never gone away. The other men, taking their cue from him, also expressed pleasure at seeing her, but concentrated their attention mainly on the children, who responded immediately. My children, she thought, are the most adjustable little creatures in the world.
Going into the bedroom, Rosalie found nothing to indicate that other people had slept there or had even entered there during her absence, a condition that pleased her until she reminded herself that, when it came to concealing evidence, her husband was undoubtedly an artist. Still, she was glad to be home, for reasons that she was sure were illogical. Home sweet home, she thought, wryly, listening to Tory tumbling on the rug in the living room, giggling as Peter Magaddino wrestled with him and tickled him. She heard that Peter Magaddino had done the cooking during her time away, which was one of the few subjects that Bill had discussed at length during a visit to the motel, adding that Magaddino had a mania about cleanliness, had emptied the garbage pail whenever it was half-full, had never left potato peelings in the sink or clogged the drain with garlic and onion skin. Rosalie, getting the hint, had changed the subject, but now on returning to her kitchen she was impressed with how spotless it was.
In September the children returned to school, and as the fallen leaves littered Tyler Avenue and the cooler breezes swept through the yard and kicked up the ashes in the outside grill, Rosalie felt that life was again closing in around her. The men seemed once more on edge, and there were times when tension filled the rooms as if it were a tangible substance. The feud that the press referred to as the “Banana War” was being reported in the newspapers more frequently and in more detail. It had obviously reached some kind of climax, with men being hunted and fired upon in the streets.
In late October, Vincent Cassese was shot in the chest and arms, and Vincent Garofalo was hit by a bullet on his left side, although both men lived. Two weeks later, in what the police speculated was perhaps an act of retaliation by a Bonanno loyalist, three men were shot to death while having dinner at the Cypress Garden Restaurant in Queens by a short, stocky man who seconds before had entered the restaurant from a rear door and walked casually through the kitchen down the aisle along the tables carrying a submachine gun under his black raincoat. Approximately twenty patrons were in the restaurant at the time, but no one paid attention to the gunman except the three marked men, who, apparently recognizing him, jumped up from their table, upsetting their chairs. The gun was pointed directly at them, however, and a burst of twenty bullets hit them at close range. They fell dead to the floor.
As the killer turned and headed back toward the kitchen the other people in the restaurant dove under their tables, cowered in corners, raced toward the front door. At one empty table a fork with spaghetti wrapped around it was resting on a plate.
The police later identified the victims as Thomas Di Angelo, James Di Angelo, and Frank Telleri, once affiliated with the Bonanno organization but most recently associated with the Di Gregorio faction. The killer was not immediately identified, but from the description of a few witnesses who were shown police photographs, the prime suspect was Peter Magaddino’s, younger brother from Castellammare, Gaspare Magaddino, who was also being sought at this time by Sicilian police in connection with other activities.
An international hunt was organized by the police, but it would take them more than a year to find him, and when they did locate Gaspare Magaddino he was dead—killed by a shotgun blast on a Brooklyn sidewalk. On his body was found a newly acquired bricklayers union card, but a detective said, “His hands were smooth. This man wasn’t a bricklayer.”
A
N UNSETTLING CALM FOLLOWED THE TRIPLE MURDER
at the Cypress Garden Restaurant as the men from the feuding factions remained off the street, and the headlines shifted in December to a scandal at City Hall. James L. Marcus, the water commissioner, a personal friend of Mayor Lindsay and son-in-law of former Governor John Davis Lodge of Connecticut, was arrested on FBI evidence that he had received $16,000 of a $40,000 kickback on a city reservoir contract that involved, among other people, two lawyers, a bakery unionist, a bank director, and a mafioso from the Lucchese organization named Antonio Corallo.
The case—which would result in jail terms for Marcus and Corallo and would also implicate onetime Democratic leader Carmine G. De Sapio—provoked pious indignation from certain citizens and editorial writers, but it reminded others of New York’s long history of political corruption and of the fact that while politicians usually denounced organized crime in public, they often profited from it privately.
During this period, in which the Mafia’s national commission was trying to determine its next move toward dealing with the Bonanno organization, Bill Bonanno quietly left New York for Arizona, where in late February he was scheduled to defend himself in court against a government claim that he and his wife owed $59,894 in back taxes for the years 19591960–1961. He was accompanied on the motor trip by Peter Notaro, cousin of the late Joseph Notaro, and by Vincent Di Pasquale, an uncle of Bill’s who was married to his mother’s eldest sister. The three men left New York in mid-February and took a leisurely journey across the country, traveling through Indiana into Illinois, crossing the Mississippi River at St. Louis, and heading through Joplin into Elk City, Oklahoma, where they were briefly stalled in a snowstorm. A day later they passed through New Mexico into Arizona, arriving in Tucson almost five days after leaving New York, which was twice as long as Bill had taken on some previous occasions. But he was using this trip almost as a pleasure excursion, and for once he did not carry large amounts of cash in his pocket, paying for gas, food, and lodgings with a Diners’ Club credit card that Sam Perrone had loaned him.
Perrone had handed the card to Bill in lieu of Bill’s share of their monthly income from their trucking business, explaining that he, like Bill, was suddenly short of cash. Perrone’s problem stemmed largely from a run of bad luck in his gambling operations—a few big “hits” by numbers players combined with the defection of certain bookmakers to Di Gregorio’s side. There was also the on-going expense of police graft and the general difficulty of trying to earn a dishonest dollar while the underworld was in ferment and members of the brotherhood were shooting at one another. Bill’s difficulties, while inevitably related to the problems of Sam Perrone and other income-producing subordinates, were on a much grander scale. He and his father were having trouble financing the Banana War, an expensive campaign that included the subsidizing of soldiers who were kept out of work by the unions, the leasing of apartment hideaways and getaway cars, the expense of bail bondsmen and lawyers for members taken into custody, the payoffs to informers in rival camps.
Some gang members, unable to supplement their income in any other way, resorted to hijacking trucks, a risky and complicated undertaking that involved kickbacks to the company dispatchers who pinpointed the travel routes of trailer trucks carrying cargo worth stealing, the renting of garage space large enough to hide a “hot” trailer, and the contacting offences” to dispose of the stolen merchandise. Because of the great haste with which information was often now obtained, a team of hijackers recently captured the wrong truck, discovering that instead of stealing a vanload of television sets they had stolen thousands of boxes of Ping-Pong balls, which they quickly abandoned in embarrassment and disgust. Another revealing sign of the hard times confronting the Bonanno men was the fact that many were economizing on their telephone calls—they made long-distance pay phone calls only when necessary, they limited the length of each call, and they were reduced to using dimes for local calls, which contrasted with their former practice of carrying nothing smaller than quarters.
It was in such a state of austerity that Bill Bonanno found himself in the early fall of 1968, forcing him to go to Perrone and other men in the hope of collecting old debts or loans or of obtaining an advance against anticipated earnings; and it was with gratitude and relief, if not with his customary caution, that Bill accepted the Diners’ Club card from Perrone and agreed to sign all charge slips not in the name of Bonanno or Perrone but in the name of the person to whom the card was registered—Don A. Torrillo.
Perrone had introduced Torrillo during the previous year as a friend of his, a young man with whom he had a “few deals” going and for whom he had done a few favors. While Torrillo was not a member of an organization, Bill was given to believe that he was the type of man commonly found on the edges of organized crime, a fringe character who got some peculiar thrill or sense of power through his shady connections. Bill would never trust a Torrillo when situations were particularly dangerous, suspecting that types like Torrillo usually collapsed under pressure and could often be coerced by the police into turning informer, but Bill was nevertheless pleased to have Torrillo’s help at this point, as Bill had had twice in the past.
Fifteen months ago, while Bill was serving a thirty-day sentence in Manhattan, Perrone visited him at the West Thirty-seventh Street jail and reported that the mortgage holders of Bill’s East Meadow house, disturbed by the newspaper publicity and considering Bill a poor business risk, were threatening to discontinue the financing of the house. Perrone said that his friend Torrillo, who was in the real estate business and had good credentials with the Dime Savings Bank, would take over title to the property and Bill could make future payments through Torrillo, which Bill did. A year later, when Bill and Perrone made a quick trip to California, Bill noticed that Perrone had purchased the plane tickets with Torrillo’s credit card. And so in February 1968, when Perrone offered the card to Bill for the Arizona trip, with the stipulation that Bill sign Torrillo’s name, Bill did not question the procedure, being in no position to be particular.
Bill had high hopes that after a few weeks or a month in Arizona, after settling his tax case, he would be able to regain some of his property that the government had confiscated and he would then be able to sell it at a price that would relieve his financial burdens. Bill was an optimist, a quality that he had cultivated long ago, recognizing it as essential to successful leadership; and while he had no reason to be optimistic about anything in 1968, he exuded even more buoyance than usual during his cross-country ride to Arizona, and on arriving in Tucson he charmingly entertained various friends at restaurants and cocktail lounges, often paying the bill with Torrillo’s credit card. He signed Torrillo’s name after taking five people to dinner at the Pancho Mexican Restaurant in Tucson, and he used the card during a trip to San Diego. He experienced no difficulty until the afternoon of March 11, 1968 when he and his companions walked into the David Bloom & Sons shop in Tucson and submitted the card after purchasing about two hundred dollars’ worth of men’s wear and a bottle of cologne. While he waited and continued to browse through the store, an assistant manager telephoned the Diners’ Club collection office in Los Angeles to check on the credit rating of Don A. Torrillo, and it was learned that certain past bills had not been paid. The Diners’ Club spokesman in Los Angeles asked to speak to Mr. Torrillo, and when Bill came to the telephone and replied incorrectly to a few personal questions that were asked about Torrillo, the man suspected that the card was in fraudulent hands, and he ordered the store manager to destroy it. Bill protested, explaining how he had gotten the card and wanted it back; but the manager of the store refused. Bill did receive permission to place a collect call from the store to New York; reaching Perrone at the trucking firm, he loudly complained about the unpaid bills on Torrillo’s card.
Perrone apologized, but said that there was nothing to worry about—Don Torrillo would take care of the situation right away. After Bill had hung up and left the store and after he had kept an appointment with a man who was helping him to compile various records and receipts for the tax case, he met with friends at the Tidelands cocktail lounge. There he received a call from his uncle, Vincent Di Pasquale, who was at the elder Bonanno’s Tucson home, saying that Carl Simari had just telephoned from East Meadow and wanted Bill to contact him immediately; it was very important.
Bill dialed East Meadow, and Simari picked up on the first ring. He asked Bill for the number of the cocktail lounge so that he could call Bill back from an outside phone. Within five minutes, Simari was back saying that he had bad news. Sam Perrone had just been shot in Brooklyn and he was dead.
Bill stood holding the phone, stunned, silent, as Simari gave additional details. Perrone, accompanied by another man, was walking out of his Brooklyn warehouse, was crossing the street to buy a pack of cigarettes, when two men suddenly jumped out of a car, fired at least eight bullets at Perrone at close range, then sped away in the car. Bill leaned against the wall for support, still saying nothing. He looked at his watch. It was 5:31 in Tucson. Less than five hours ago, he had spoken to Perrone.
Bill’s father later sent word from East Meadow that Bill was to remain in Tucson and under no conditions was he to return to New York. The rumor circulating was that Bill was the next target. The Di Gregorio gang’s top triggerman, Frank Mari—the one who had led the Troutman Street ambush—had been spotted a few days ago sitting in a parked car with two other men, all three carrying guns; and it was believed that Mari had had the contract to dispose of Perrone.
The newspapers, quoting the police, said that Perrone’s murder was partly in reprisal for the shooting earlier in the month of an officer in Di Gregorio’s group, Peter Crociata, who survived even though he had been hit by six bullets as he parked his car near his Brooklyn home.
The death of Perrone was extremely painful for Bill. The newspapers described Perrone as his bodyguard and chauffeur, but Perrone had been much more than that. Since the death of Frank Labruzzo, Perrone had been his closest friend and companion, a man his own age with whom he had communicated easily, whose humor he had enjoyed, and whom he had trusted absolutely. It was Perrone who had driven to Bill’s rescue on the night of the Troutman Street shooting, and now that Perrone had been murdered Bill felt personally responsible for avenging the death. He was strongly tempted to disobey his father and return to New York. He stayed up all night in his father’s home, pacing the room like a wild creature in a cage, swearing, vowing, sobbing softly.
He was still visibly distraught on the following day, as his uncle and Peter Notaro tried to calm him down, saying at 1:30
P.M
. that the FBI was at the door wishing to speak with him. Bill yelled to Notaro to tell the agents to go around to the back door. Then, rising from his chair in the living room, Bill walked through the house to the yard, where, after opening the back door gate, he saw two men wearing suits and ties, seeming very officious. Bill invited them into the patio and asked them to be seated. The taller agent, who introduced himself as David Hale, began abruptly, “Well, I see your friend got it.”
Bill glared at him. “Are you gentlemen here on official business,”he asked, sarcastically, “or is this a social call?”
“You know damned well we’re here on official business,” Hale said.
“Look you son of a bitch,” Bill said, standing up, pointing a finger down at Hale, “either you’re going to conduct yourself properly, or you’re going to get the hell out of here right now!”
Hale looked hard at Bonanno, turned to the other agent, who said nothing, then looked back toward Bonanno. Hale then asked, more softly, “Well, are you going to be rushing back to New York?”
“I’m going back to New York when I feel like it,” Bill said, sharply, and after that he refused to say much of anything, professing ignorance to the questions or saying he would have to consult with his attorney before replying. The agents remained for another moment, then stood and left.
Bill Bonanno was back in New York within two weeks; and on Monday, April 1, accompanied by an attorney, he answered a subpoena to appear at the Supreme Court in Brooklyn with several other gang members and defectors who were again being questioned, as they had been on many previous occasions, about the Troutman Street incident, which was now more than two years old but still an unsolved mystery insofar as the government was concerned.
Most of the mafiosi who appeared in court on this day had already served terms in jail for previous unresponsive-ness on the Troutman Street issue, and they now were again threatened by contempt of court citations. But if they were concerned about this, or were worried about anything at all on this day, they did not show it as they entered the Supreme Court Building and waited in the corridor to testify. They were aware that their every gesture was being observed by detectives and federal agents, who were attempting to assess the relative strength and relationships between members of the feuding factions. What the law enforcement men did not know was that the mafiosi were now as confused as everybody else with regard to which men were on which side.
For example, when Bill saw John Morale in court, whom he greeted in a manner that was polite but unrevealing, he was quite sure that Morale had left the Bonanno organization, but he was not sure whether Morale had become part of a third force that was rumored to have splintered off from sections of the Di Gregorio and Bonanno units. At the same time Bill was very cordial to Michael Consolo, a sixty-four-year-old veteran of the Bonanno organization who Bill knew had recently joined Di Gregorio’s men. It was only when Bill learned later that night that Consolo had just been found in the street, lying next to his car, with two bullets in his head and four in his back, that he realized how confused everyone had become. Consolo must have been murdered by his own men, possibly through misinterpretation of orders or possibly because he was seen conversing so amiably with Bill during the day in court, and this must have misled some people into thinking that Consolo had gone back to the Bonanno side. Or maybe Michael Consolo was killed by the third group for some other reason; Bill did not know. But both he and his father agreed on the following day that the war had now reached a level of insanity—nobody could tell from which direction the next volley of bullets would be coming, and Bill was concerned about the safety of Rosalie and the children in a way that he had not been before.