Honor Thy Father (4 page)

The mansion was on a sprawling estate protected by high walls and trees and by watchdogs and gunmen. After the death of Joseph Profaci in 1962, Joe Magliocco, a muscular fat man weighing 300 pounds, had taken over the Profaci operation, including its control over the Italian lottery in Brooklyn. (Rosalie’s father, Salvatore Profaci, was also dead at this point; he was killed before her wedding due to an explosion he had caused while working on an engine in his motorboat.) Magliocco, an impulsive man who lacked organizational ability, had also inherited many problems when he took over, the worst of which was an internal revolt of younger members led by the Gallo brothers. The dissension caused by the Gallo faction was still unresolved when Rosalie and Bill Bonanno moved in with Magliocco in 1963, and they sensed that things were becoming almost desperate for Magliocco in the late summer and fall of that year—men were coming and going at odd hours, the dogs were on constant alert, and Magliocco was rarely without his bodyguard even when walking short distances through his estate.

One morning in December, as the Bonanno’s two-year-old son, Joseph, was crawling through the dining room, he reached between the china closet and the wall and pulled the trigger of a rifle that had been left standing there. The rifle blast blew a hole in the ceiling, hitting through the upper floor not far from where Magliocco lay sleeping. The fat man bolted out of bed, yelling, and Rosalie, who had been feeding her newly born infant in another part of the house, began to scream. The big house suddenly vibrated with a flurry of bodies running in panic, chasing and shouting—until the little boy was discovered downstairs, sitting on the rug wearing his red pajamas, stunned but safe, with a smoking rifle at his feet. Two weeks later, Joe Magliocco died of a heart attack.

O
N HEARING
F
RANK
L
ABRUZZO RING THE DOWNSTAIRS
bell, Bill Bonanno pressed the buzzer and then watched through the peephole of the apartment door. He saw Labruzzo step out of the elevator with newspapers under his arm, and he could tell by the pale expression on Labruzzo’s face that something had gone wrong.

Labruzzo said nothing as he entered the apartment. He handed the papers to Bonanno. On the front page of every one in large headlines at the very top, was the news:

Bill Bonanno felt feverish and dizzy. He sank into a chair, his mind racing with confusion and disbelief. The headlines, large letters spreading across the entire page, more prominent than the war in Vietnam and the social revolution in America, seemed to be screaming at him and demanding a reply, and he wanted to react quickly, to run somewhere to do something violent, hating the feeling of being helpless and trapped. But he forced himself to sit and read every paragraph. Most of the newspaper articles suggested that Joseph Bonanno was already dead, possibly encased in concrete and resting in a river. There was some speculation that he was being held hostage until he made certain concessions, and there was even a theory that the kidnaping was a hoax arranged by Joseph Bonanno himself as a way of avoiding an appearance before a federal grand jury meeting in Manhattan later in the week.

The younger Bonanno discounted the last point as absurd. He was convinced that his father had intended to appear before the grand jury as he had before others in the past—revealing nothing, of course, but at least appearing and pleading his innocence or seeking refuge in his constitutional rights. Bill Bonanno also did not believe that his father would have attempted anything so tricky as a staged kidnaping without first consulting with Labruzzo and himself.

He watched Labruzzo pacing back and forth through the room like a caged animal. Labruzzo still had said nothing. Normally calm, he seemed at this moment nervous and fearful. Aware that he was being observed, Labruzzo turned and, as if trying to reestablish his position as a cool man under pressure, said almost casually, “Look, if its true that he’s dead, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“If it’s true,” Bonanno replied, “they’re going to be looking for us next.”

Labruzzo was again silent. Bonanno got up to turn on the television set and the radio for late news. He wondered if the location of their apartment was known to outsiders, and he also tried to figure out which men from his own organization might have collaborated in his father’s capture, feeling certain that it had been handled partly from the inside. How else would they have known that Joseph Bonanno had planned to spend the night at Maloney’s place? Everything had been done so neatly, the two gunmen appearing on Park Avenue just as the elder Bonanno stepped out of a cab, and Maloney, getting out first, running ahead through the rain and not seeing anything until after it had happened. Maloney might have been part of the deal, Bonanno thought, Maloney or one of the lawyers in his firm who knew of Joseph Bonanno’s plans.

Bill Bonanno, like his father, was suspicious of most lawyers. Lawyers were servants of the court, part of the system, which meant that they could never be trusted entirely—or they were Mafia buffs, men who enjoyed being on the fringe of the gangster’s world, who were fascinated no doubt by the occasional glimpses they got into the secret society. Sometimes they even became involved in Mafia intrigue, giving advice to one don or another, and shifting sides as the odds changed—it was a kind of game with them. And no matter which faction won or lost, the lawyers suryived. They lived to accompany their clients to the courthouse, and they later made statements to the press—they were a privileged clique, highly publicized, highly paid, often crooked but rarely caught,
they
were the untouchables. Bonanno remembered having heard years ago of how the Mafia dons had complained among themselves about the exorbitant fees charged by certain lawyers after the police raided the Apalachin conference. A few dons claimed to have paid about $50,000 each for their legal defense, and since much of this was paid in cash, as the lawyers had requested, the mafiosi could only guess at the amount on which no taxes were paid. While Bonanno did not know Maloney or his legal partners personally or professionally, he nevertheless suspected the worst until evidence proved otherwise—they were lawyers, after all, they lived off other people’s misery.

As for the men who provided the muscle in the kidnaping, Bonanno assumed that they had the approval of the Mafia’s national commission, which had recently suspended Joseph Bonanno from its membership. He also assumed that they acted under the personal direction of the Mafia boss in Buffalo, the senior member of the commission, seventy-three-year-old Stefano Magaddino, his father’s cousin and former friend from Castellammare. Magaddino’s apparent bitterness toward the elder Bonanno was a subject often discussed within the Bonanno organization in 1963 and 1964. It was believed to be based partly on the fact that Magaddino, whose territory extended from western New York into the Ohio Valley and included links with Canadian racketeers in Toronto, felt threatened by Joseph Bonanno’s ambitions in Canada. For decades the Bonanno organization had worked in partnership with a group of mafiosi in Montreal, sharing most profitably in the importation of untaxed alcohol as well as in gambling and other illegal activities, including the control of the pizza trade and various protection rackets in Montreal’s large Italian community. In 1963, when Joseph Bonanno applied for Canadian citizenship, Magaddino interpreted this as further evidence that Bonanno’s Canadian interests were going to extend into Magaddino’s territory, and he was overheard one day complaining of Bonanno: “He’s planting flags all over the world!”

Even though Bonanno’s petition for Canadian citizenship was denied and was followed by his expulsion, Magaddino’s suspicions persisted. The feeling was not based on any one issue, Bonanno’s men believed, but was inspired by a combination of fear and jealousy. They remembered Magaddino’s dark mood on the night of Bill Bonanno’s wedding reception in 1956, how he had stood near the dais surveying the great gathering of mafiosi who had come from all parts of the nation out of respect for Joseph Bonanno, and Magaddino said in a loud voice to a man at his table: “Look at this crowd. Who the hell’s going to be able to talk to my cousin now? This will go to his head.”

Bill Bonanno also sensed how little Magaddino thought of him, and how upset the Buffalo boss had become when the elder Bonanno sanctioned his elevation to number three man in the Bonanno organization and overlooked a member that Magaddino considered more worthy of promotion—Magaddino’s own brother-in-law, Gaspar Di Gregorio. Di Gregorio had been a member of the Bonanno organization for thirty years, and until recent months Bill Bonanno believed that Di Gregorio was one of his father’s most loyal followers. He was a quiet, unassuming gray-haired man of fifty-nine who ran a coat factory in Brooklyn and was virtually unknown to the FBI. Born in Castellammare, he fought alongside the elder Bonanno in the famous Brooklyn gang war of 1930, and a year later he was the best man when Joseph Bonanno married Fay Labruzzo. He was also Bill Bonanno’s godfather, a friend and adviser during the younger Bonanno’s years as an adolescent and student, and it was difficult for Bonanno to figure out when and why Di Gregorio had decided to pull away from the Bonanno organization and lure others with him. Di Gregorio had always been a follower, not a leader, and Bill Bonanno could only conclude that Magaddino had finally succeeded after years of effort to use Di Gregorio as the dividing wedge in the Bonanno organization. Di Gregorio took with him perhaps twenty or thirty men, perhaps more—Bill Bonanno could only guess, for there was no easy way to know who stood where at this point. Maybe fifty of the three-hundred-man Bonanno family had defected in the last month, influenced by the commission’s decision to suspend the elder Bonanno and encouraged by Magaddino’s assurance that the commission would protect them from reprisals by Bonanno loyalists.

No matter what the situation was, Bill Bonanno knew that he could only wait. With his father gone, perhaps dead, it was important that he remain alive to deal with whatever had to be done. To venture outdoors at this point would be foolish and maybe suicidal. If the police did not spot him, Magaddino’s men might. So Bonanno tried to suppress the fury and the despair that he felt and to resign himself to the long wait with Labruzzo. The phone was ringing now, the third code call in the past five minutes—the captains were reporting in from other apartments, available for any message he might wish to leave with the answering service. He would call in a few moments to let them know that he was all right.

It was noon. Through the venetian blinds he could see that it was a dark, dreary day. Labruzzo was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee, the dog at his feet. The pantry was well stocked with canned goods and boxes of pasta, and there was plenty of meat and sauce in the refrigerator. Bonanno, a fair cook, would now have lots of practice. They could exist here easily for several days. Only the dog would miss the outdoors.

Bonanno and Labruzzo lived in confinement for nearly a week, sleeping in shifts with their guns strapped to their chests. They were visited at night by the few men they trusted. One of these was a captain named Joe Notaro. He had been close to the Bonannos for years and was respected for his judgment and caution. But on his first visit to the apartment, Notaro admitted with regret and embarrassment that he had probably been indirectly responsible for the elder Bonanno’s capture.

He recalled that on the day of the kidnaping he was sitting in his car discussing Joseph Bonanno’s plans for the evening with another officer, speaking in a tone loud enough to be heard by the driver. Notaro’s driver was a meek little man who had been with the organization for a number of years and had never been taken seriously by the members. As Notaro was later astonished to discover, the driver was then working as an informer for the Di Gregorio faction. The driver had apparently held a grudge against the organization ever since one of the captains had taken away his girl friend, and Joseph Bonanno was too preoccupied at the time with other matters to intercede in the driver’s behalf. The fact that the offending captain was later sentenced to a long jail term on a conspiracy charge in a narcotics case had not soothed the driver’s wounded ego. After Bonanno’s capture, the driver had disappeared, and Notaro just learned that he was now driving for Di Gregorio’s group.

Among other bits of information picked up by Notaro and his fellow officers from their sources around town—from bookmakers and loan sharks, from the men who work in nightclubs and in related businesses linked socially to the underworld—was that Joseph Bonanno was not yet dead and was being held by Magaddino’s men at a farm somewhere in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. The FBI and the police were reported to be concentrating their efforts in that area, and they had also visited Bonanno’s home in Tucson and were keeping watch on the late Joe Magliocco’s mansion, considering it an ideal hideaway because of its protective walls and the private dock. As for the status of the organization, Bonanno’s officers believed that more than 200 men were still loyal and that their morale was high. Most of the men were remaining indoors, the officers said, and were sleeping in shifts and doing their own cooking in their apartments and rented rooms. Bonanno and Labruzzo were told that at one apartment the men had complained at dinner the previous evening that the spaghetti had a metallic taste—they later learned that the cook, while vigorously stirring the meat sauce, had knocked his pistol out of his chest holster into the pot.

With each visit the officers brought the latest papers, and Bonanno and Labruzzo could see that the kidnaping episode was continuing to receive enormous coverage. Pictures of the younger Bonanno appeared in several papers, and there was speculation that he too had been taken by his father’s enemies, or that he was hiding in New York or Arizona, or that he was in the protective custody of federal agents. When a reporter had telephoned FBI headquarters to verify this, an agency spokesman refused to comment.

The headline writers were having fun with the story, Bonanno could see—
YES, WE HAVE NO BANANAS
—and reporters were also keeping a close watch on his wife and children at home in East Meadow, Long Island. One paper described Rosalie as leaning out of a window to reply to a reporter, in a “trembling voice,” that she knew nothing of her husband’s wherabouts, and her eyes were said to be “red-rimmed” as if she had been crying. Another newspaper, describing her as very pretty and shy, said she had spent part of the afternoon in a beauty parlor. A third paper reported that Bonanno’s
seven-year
-old son, Charles, while playing on the sidewalk in front of the house, had been approached by a detective asking questions about his father; but the boy replied that he knew nothing. Bill Bonanno was very pleased.

He had trained his children well, he thought. He had cautioned them, as his own father had once cautioned him, to be careful when speaking with strangers. He did not want his children to be curt or disrespectful to anyone, including the police, but he warned them to be on guard when asked about matters pertaining to their home or parents, their relatives, or the friends of relatives. He had also conveyed to his children his disapproval of tattletales. If they saw their brothers, sisters, or cousins doing something wrong, he had said, it was improper for them to go talebearing to adults, adding that nobody had respect for a stool pigeon, not even those who gained by such information.