Honor Thy Father (23 page)

In New York City, however, Salvatore Bonanno remained aloof from gang activity and concentrated on learning English, traveling around the city, and operating his restaurant. When his son Joseph was old enough, he entered the first grade at the public school on Roebling Street. A year later, in 1911, Salvatore Bonanno was summoned home by his brothers in Castellammare. A dispute had erupted among various gangs in western Sicily, and while the Magaddino and Bonanno factions were still united, other large local families, such as the Buccellatos, were not and were suspected of conspiring with outside
amici
to take over control of the piers and other operations in Castellammare. Salvatore’s land and cattle interests were threatened, he was told; so as soon as he and his wife could pack and board a steamer, they began the voyage back to Sicily. Joseph Bonanno was six years old and was speaking Sicilian with a Brooklyn accent.

By the time the family arrived in Castellammare, the threat of a widespread battle and series of vendettas had simmered down, and it was soon obvious to Salvatore that his trip home was something of a false alarm. He was initially angry with his brothers but decided to postpone his return to America for a while until he was absolutely certain that the disputes and misunderstandings were settled to everyone’s satisfaction.

There was obviously great unrest throughout the island, particularly in the western region, and Salvatore Bonanno was more aware than ever of the divisiveness of the people. Sicily seemed to be an island of many islands, a mixture of individualists united only in their poverty, and their lives were so very different from those immigrants who had settled in Brooklyn and elsewhere in America. Salvatore noticed that no man in western Sicily ventured along the open road beyond the town without a shotgun in his saddle or a pistol in his pocket, which had not been the case in New York, although it might have been in the cowboy country of western America. Salvatore became increasingly aware, too, of the hostility of western Sicilians toward eastern Sicilians, especially since the western capital of Palermo had been overtaken in overseas trade by the eastern port of Catania, resulting in dwindling profits for the
amici
and everyone else who had linked their fortunes to Palermo.

The plight of western Sicily continued to be ignored by the Italian government in Rome, except in instances that were embarrassing to Sicilians—such as the impeachment from the Senate of a popular representative from Trapani, capital of the western province of which Castellammare was a part, because he was charged with padding municipal payrolls, installing his friends and the
amici
in political jobs, misappropriating certain funds for personal use or patronage, doing things that Sicilians believed all politicians did, including those in Rome. When the Italian government would not drop its charges against the Trapani representative, there were protests throughout Sicily, especially in the western region; the Italian king’s picture was publicly burned, a local street was named in honor of the defamed politician, and a French flag was flown in the town square, suggesting that the Roman bureaucrats were no less hypocritical or despicable than the French had been centuries ago, and a few Sicilian citizens advocated a bloody revolt similar to the one that had occurred in 1282.

The Italian government was not surprised by this response since many of its membership had long felt that Sicilians were incorrigible, impossible to understand, and perhaps even criminal by nature. The Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso came close to suggesting this in pointing out that while eastern Sicilians had been greatly influenced by Greek colonization, the western Sicilians had been more influenced by the Arabs, many of whom in the thirteenth century were driven into the hills behind Palermo and were forced to survive through their cunning and deception. Other Italian theorists suggested that western Sicilians living in or near Palermo were generally lazy and unambitious because they had been ruled for hundreds of years by the lax administration of the medieval Spanish. And there were other explanations, too, that were equally unflattering to western Sicilians.

Salvatore Bonanno resented the aspersions cast upon his region, particularly since he had seen for himself in America how hard western Sicilians were willing to work if given a chance. Not only did they work hard but they earned extra money to send back to their relatives in Sicily, and this financial bonus was a boon to the sagging Sicilian economy. Another benefit provided by their immigration was in making more jobs available to those who remained at home, and Sicilian landowners were often heard to complain of their inability to find sufficient numbers of farm workers.

But Salvatore Bonanno saw no change with regard to violence in Sicily—hardly a day passed without a few people being shot in the streets because of one vendetta or another, and there was endless cattle stealing and kidnaping for ransom. Among the many murders during the early 1900s in Sicily was the fatal shooting of an American detective who had come to the island to learn what he could about the Mafia. His name was Petrosino. He was born in Italy and had immigrated at thirteen to the United States. Eventually he became a member of the New York City Police Department and then was selected to work with the Italian Squad, a secret unit established in 1904 to help curb the extortion racket that was growing in New York and was believed to be run by the Mafia, or, as it was also called, the Black Hand or the Unione Siciliane. Petrosino thought that he would be better equipped to fight the Mafia in America if he learned more about its origins in Sicily, and gradually he convinced his superiors to send him. He traveled there under an assumed name, and his mission was confidential, but as he strolled through a piazza in Palermo on the day of his arrival, he was approached from behind and was shot four times in the head and back. Petrosino fell dead in the street. His killer or killers disappeared into the crowds in the square and escaped.

Salvatore Bonanno’s presence had a restraining effect on the mafiosi of Castellammare and neighboring towns and villages in the province of Trapani. Since he had been in America during the five years in which there had been much dissension among the gang leaders, much infiltration of traditional boundaries, and unauthorized brigandage, he was able to avoid taking sides with one faction or another; as a result, he could arbitrate disputes with apparent objectivity. Though he was young, he commanded respect from his elders; and though he was soft-spoken, he could be vengeful if necessary, and more than one corpse was found along the narrow hilly roads of Castellammare after his judgments and warnings had been ignored. Tall and formal of manner, he was a conspicuous figure wherever he went, and the people of the town were beginning to extend to him the deference that custom required.

But in 1915, in his thirty-seventh year, he became ill with a respiratory ailment that was not adequately treated, and in November of that year, while he sat at home writing a letter, he quietly died. He still held the pen in his hand and seemed to be meditating at his desk when he was discovered in that position by Peter Magaddino, then thirteen, who had entered the house looking for his friend Joseph.

The death of Salvatore Bonanno was recognized throughout the province of Trapani, and several hundred people followed the horse-drawn casket through the town toward the cemetery near the base of the mountain. In the procession were all the important families of the area—the Magaddinos and Buccellatos, the Vitales, the Rimis, the Bonventres (Mrs. Bonanno’s family), and dozens of other clans together with the priests and politicians. At the head of the cortege walked Joseph Bonanno, eleven, with his mother, thirty-one, dressed from head to toe in black, the color she planned to wear for the rest of her life.

Weeks after the death of his father, Joseph Bonanno returned to school, deeply depressed but finding comfort in his close companionship with Peter Magaddino. It was to Magaddino that he confided things that he withheld from his many cousins and uncles, and one recurring dream that possessed Joseph Bonanno as a boy was to run away from home and become a sea captain of a large ocean liner like the one in which he had crossed the Atlantic with his parents. Sometimes he awoke in the middle of the night screaming with visions of himself sinking with his ship, seeing the bow slowly submerging into the sea. Much of his boyhood was preoccupied with death, not only his own but the death of people he did not know in distant places. He overheard people speaking in Castellammare about the many Sicilians killed fighting in Europe for the worthless Italian government in World War I, and he saw many servicemen returning to the town with amputated limbs or with strange ailments due to inhaling gas on the battlefield. He saw pieces of black cloth on the doors of numerous homes, signifying that there had been a death in the family, and it seemed sometimes that every woman he passed on the street was wearing a black dress, and every man wore a black band around his sleeve or on his lapel. Death was the obsession of Sicilians, they paraded their mourning colors almost with pride, and even on bright sunny days, Castellammare seemed black. Among the few vivid recollections of gaiety that Joseph Bonanno had as a boy was the ship’s voyage from New York on which were many
Americani
in brightly colored clothes laughing among themselves, singing in the bar.

In 1920, when she was thirty-seven, his mother died. Joseph Bonanno was an orphan at fifteen. He was left with the large house and other property in addition to the farm, cattle, and interests in other businesses. In a town where the great majority of the 14,000 population was destitute, Joseph Bonanno was an individual of rare wealth, and his uncles vied to become his official guardian. They argued endlessly among themselves and bitterness ensued; it lasted for more than a year as young Joseph Bonanno shifted between their homes, feeling embarrassment and disgust as the squabbling continued. Finally he made up his mind to leave Castellammare. He arranged for his uncles to have enough money sent each month so that he could support himself, and he left to them the problem of dividing the property and other valuables to their own satisfaction. He was going to live in Palermo to attend a nautical college, and his friend Peter Magaddino went with him.

The two young men lived for two years in the capital, and it was a time of great excitement and confusion in Sicilian history. Mussolini had risen to power in Italy in 1922, and he had made trips to Sicily where he delivered speeches promising improvements and reform. In the beginning, Mussolini was cheered by most elements of Sicilian society—the aristocrats applauded his call for the restoration of grandeur, the masses responded to his program for a better life, even the mafiosi were impressed with his valorous demeanor and flamboyant oratory. The mafiosi also assumed that he would work with them, as other politicians had done, in return for their assurance of political support. But the Mafia bosses in Sicily greatly underestimated Mussolini’s ego. He was not the sort of man who could tolerate secret groups that he could not control, and a few incidents occurred during his visits to Sicily that sharpened his indignation against the Mafia’s traditional independence and lawlessness.

On one occasion, while Mussolini was attending a meeting, someone stole the hat that he had left in an outer room; the police could not recover it, and then someone suggested, to Mussolini’s chagrin, that perhaps the Mafia’s aid might be sought. On another trip to Sicily, Mussolini was touring a town in the province of Palermo with the mayor who was also the local Mafia chief. When the mayor observed the many policemen in Mussolini’s entourage, he expressed surprise, informing Mussolini with obvious pride: “As I have the whole of this district under my orders, Your Excellency has nothing to fear when you are by my side.” Then the mayor, turning to some of his men standing nearby, added: “Let no one dare touch a hair of Mussolini’s head. He is my friend and the best man in the world.” Mussolini could barely contain his fury. When he returned to Rome he initiated plans to arrest the mayor and to begin a campaign to eliminate the Mafia, which he regarded as the scourge of Sicily and a tremendous impediment to the island’s progress and control.

The man assigned to confront the Mafia was a ruthlessly efficient Fascist and former police officer named Cesare Mori; and if Mori, as the prefect of Palermo, did not totally destroy the Mafia in the next few years, he most assuredly did drive it underground. Unhindered by the strictures of justice, Mori’s police units arrested hundreds of mafiosi or suspected members, tortured them with electric wires, cattle whips, fire, and stretched and squeezed them on the medieval rack. That many innocent people were condemned unjustly did not concern Cesare Mori, who was backed solidly in the campaign by Mussolini. Most of the island’s aristocracy were generally pleased by Mori’s results, for now they no longer had to worry so much about the plundering of their property.

Joseph Bonanno, however, was appalled by what was happening, and together with Peter Magaddino and other students in Palermo, he joined a young radical organization that circulated anti-Fascist literature, denounced Mussolini in billboard posters, and stole or damaged the photographs of him on display in public buildings. This activity soon came to Mori’s attention, and arrest warrants were issued against the students. But Bonanno, Magaddino, and five others with Mafia connections in western Sicily went into hiding, and later in 1924 they were smuggled on a freighter bound for Marseilles.

They remained briefly in Marseilles, went next to Paris. There Joseph Bonanno visited one of his cousins, who was an artist, and he marked time while arrangements were being made in Castellammare by the
amici
for the seven young men to be smuggled into the United States. There was considerable communication between the mafiosi of Sicily and the United States at this time due largely to the fabulous smuggling and bootlegging business created in the United States in 1920 by the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment banning the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks. Mafiosi were traveling back and forth between the two countries carrying messages and recruiting men in Sicily to come to America to work in the vast illegal industry generated by Prohibition. Many people from Castellammare were now rising in the ranks of the American underworld as organizers or enforcers, and many others were contributing their services to the bootlegging industry by driving trucks that delivered the product to speakeasies, by working as smugglers along American piers, by manufacturing homemade whiskey and wine in their stills at home, as they had done in the old country, and selling it to central organizations. Among these people were several friends of the Bonannos, and when they heard that the son of Salvatore Bonanno was coming to America they pledged to help him in every way possible.