Honor Thy Father (32 page)

If a man was just murdered because he was observed speaking in a friendly manner with Bill, then Bill Bonanno had seriously underestimated how intensely some people hated him, and it was not inconceivable that his East Meadow home could become a target, that a bullet or bomb would soon penetrate the thin-walled residence that was located close to the street.

Bill wanted to move to another house. Safety was not the only reason to relocate, for there was a possibility that he would soon be evicted from the East Meadow house. According to Perrone’s plan of more than a year ago, Bill’s monthly payments were made through Don Torrillo, whose credit card Bill had been forced to surrender; and since Perrone’s death, Bill had been unable to reach Torrillo. Bill could not sell the East Meadow house, in which he had already invested $15,000, without making the necessary arrangements with Torrillo, and Torrillo now seemed to be ignoring the efforts of Bill’s attorneys to communicate with him through the mail, telephone, or telegrams.

Then one of Bill’s attorneys learned through a courthouse source that Torrillo had been conferring with detectives and was believed to be in some deep legal difficulty, perhaps because of gambling or other crimes; and what most worried Bill now was that Don Torrillo, in return for the lessening of whatever criminal charges were being brought against him, was going to serve as the government’s key witness in establishing a case against Bill Bonanno in the credit card situation. Torrillo might claim that Bonanno and Perrone had stolen the card from him or had forced him to relinquish it. As optimistic as Bill was about most things, he knew that he would probably have a tough time in court disputing Torrillo. Without Perrone to testify, it would be Bill’s word against Torrillo’s, and Bill suspected that a jury’s sympathies would be with Torrillo, an unknown figure, rather than with a highly publicized Mafia leader.

Still his main concern at the moment was not reaching Torrillo but the immediate problem of remaining alive and moving his wife and children to a safer place. Bill discussed the situation with Rosalie, and he was surprised by her quick reply, suggesting that she had given thought to the subject. She wanted to move to northern California, she said, preferring to settle near her married sister, Ann, who was in San Jose; her sister Josephine, a college student who had transferred from Santa Clara to Berkeley; and also Bill’s sister, Catherine, who lived in the community of Atherton, south of San Francisco.

After reviewing it with his father, Bill decided that Rosalie’s going to California was a sound idea and that the sooner it was done the better. His father concurred, saying that it was foolish for any of them to remain in the East much longer. The organization was in a quandary, as was the opposition.

Nobody was sure anymore who the enemy was. As a result, most of the soldiers were in hiding, although there were a number of Bonanno loyalists who were determined to fight until the end, settling old scores.

The elder Bonanno nevertheless felt that the hostility and confusion would subside if he and Bill left town for a while, since it was they who were the main source of controversy. Joseph Bonanno planned to take some of his men with him to Tucson, in time to spend Easter with his wife, and he suggested that Bill should leave immediately with Rosalie and the children for California. After they were settled there, Bill could come alone to Arizona. Bill agreed; and on April 10, packing the car with only the most essential household equipment, and leaving the furniture behind to be collected later, he left with his family for California, planning to go first to Catherine’s.

Along the way he kept in touch by telephone with events in New York, and, contrary to his father’s expectations, the shooting did not stop. One of Perrone’s warehouse employees was injured, though not fatally, by one of five bullets fired into his Cadillac; and then one of the Di Gregorio men was shot three times as he sat in a Democratic club in Brooklyn, but he too survived. Also in April, in a Brooklyn luncheonette, there was the fatal shooting of Charles LoCicero, who was not affiliated with the Bonanno or the Di Gregorio faction but with the Joseph Colombo family, a fact that puzzled the police at first. But later, on the basis of a report by an underworld informant, the killing was said to have been done by one of Bonanno’s men in response to the elder Bonanno’s alleged remark, following his family’s most recent casualty: “The next time they hit one of my men, they lose one of their
capos
[captains], first in one family, then in another.”

N
OT LONG AFTER HIS ARRIVAL IN
T
UCSON,
J
OSEPH
Bonanno complained of pains in his chest, neck, and left arm. After consulting a physician, he was sent to St. Joseph’s Hospital for treatment of what was diagnosed as a mild heart attack. But word of Bonanno’s ailment was received skeptically in New York by agents and the police, who suspected that Bonanno was merely making excuses to avoid appearing before a Brooklyn grand jury investigating the Banana War, and a physician was appointed by the court to examine Bonanno in Tucson. This examination, however, apparently confirmed the illness because Bonanno was not forced to fly to New York. He remained in the hospital for a week, leaving after a switchboard operator reported receiving a call at 5:40
P.M.
from a man who refused to give his name but who said, slowly and precisely: “I am calling from Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. We are going to assassinate Mr. Bonanno.”

Accompanied by bodyguards, Bonanno was moved slowly by wheelchair on the following morning to an awaiting Cadillac driven by his son Bill, who had left Rosalie and the children in an apartment in San Jose, California. The elder Bonanno’s companions also included Peter Magaddino, Peter Notaro, and a few men who were strangers to Tucson, although the police later indentified one of them as a Mafia “muscle man” from New York named Angelo Sparaco, whose last arrest was on charges of assault with brass knuckles. Carl Simari was not seen in Tucson and it was assumed that he was still in New York, where a few dozen Bonanno loyalists were engaged in guerrilla tactics with the Di Gregorio followers led by Paul Sciacca.

Tight security arrangements existed at the elder Bonanno’s home on East Elm Street, with guards posted through the day and night behind the high brick wall in the rear of the house and with additional men stationed near the front of the house between bushes and trees and equipped with walkie-talkies so that they could alert the men in the house if anything suspicious happened. Bill Bonanno, who was in charge of security, was concerned not only about the telephone threat but also by some letters that he had recently received, letters that predicted his father’s death and his own and seemed to have been written by someone who had an insider’s knowledge of the organization. There were references to men who had worked under the late Joseph Notaro in the Bronx, hints about some of Sam Perrone’s activities that had not appeared in the press. The letters were not the typical hysterical illiterate notes that self-appointed vigilantes frequently sent to mafiosi whose addresses were published in newspapers, and for this reason Bill took them seriously and arranged for around-the-clock protection of his father’s home.

The men slept in shifts through June and July, constantly on the alert for any intrusion, but nothing happened. The monotony, Bill thought, the monotony is maddening, and he was tempted at times to leave again for California; but each time he resisted, fearful that a disaster would strike moments after his departure. Then on Sunday night, July 21, he heard on the radio that two explosions had shattered a shed and damaged four vehicles on the ranch of Peter Licavoli, a part-time Tucson resident who was a Mafia leader in Detroit. Licavoli and the elder Bonanno had been friends for years, and yet after the explosions the newspapers reported the police suspected that trouble might be simmering between some of Licavoli’s men and Bonanno’s.

This made little sense to anyone in the Bonanno household, but on the following evening, Bill Bonanno decided to stand guard himself at the rear of the house, since this was where his parents’ bedrooms were located and since he was considered the most accurate marksmen among the men. After loading his shotgun, he climbed the makeshift stone steps that had been piled against a large tree in the backyard from which he could observe the motor traffic and pedestrians coming and going along Chauncey Lane, which bordered the back of the property.

Bill remained in the tree for more than an hour; it was a warm night with a bright sky, and the faint noises that he heard were coming from a television set in the living room, where his father and another man were sitting, and from the German shepherd watchdog, Rebel, who paced about in the patio, digging in the dirt, shaking off flies. Bill’s mother, who had been ill with a nervous condition for months, was already asleep. Having seen so little of her in recent years, he was appalled on returning to Arizona this summer to discover how quickly she had aged, although it was understandable. In fact, it was remarkable that she had endured as well as she had during the years of uncertainty and solitude, remaining loyal to her husband and sons despite a multitude of accusations against them, never running away, rarely complaining. Bill thought that his mother had been well prepared for life’s difficulties by her stern and demanding father, Charles Labruzzo, a man who seemed to have spent so much of his energy warring with the wind. Once in the early 1930s, Joseph Bonanno brought Labruzzo to an organizational meeting, thinking that he might wish to become affiliated; but on entering a crowded clubroom, and after spotting a man he intensely disliked, Labruzzo shouted an insult and left the room, declaring that any group that tolerated such a creature was unworthy of consideration. Another man would have been shot for such behavior. But not Charles Labruzzo. His alienation was so total that the mafiosi felt no special disrespect.

Shortly after 9:00
P.M.
, hot and thirsty, Bill climbed down from the tree to go into the house for a drink of water. But before he entered, he heard a car passing through Chauncey Lane, and so he waited, his right hand on the doorknob, his left holding the shotgun. He looked at his watchdog standing at his side, growling softly; then suddenly Rebel’s fur bristled, he leaped forward and charged toward the gate, barking, and Bill followed with his shotgun ready—but he quickly stopped as he saw flying through the air a black object that landed heavily in the barbecue pit.

Bill heard a sizzling sound, smelled burning tar. Running up the steps to the high branch of the tree, he saw a man running away from the gate. Bill took aim, fired. The man staggered and fell. But then Bill felt the explosive impact of a bomb knocking him loose from the tree, flinging him to the ground. He had fallen about fifteen feet, but was not hurt, although bits of glass and parts of the garage roof were crashing to the ground around him.

As he got to his feet, a second explosion knocked him off balance again, the force of the blast turning him around, tossing him against a lemon tree near the wall. He was stunned, yet conscious of everything around him, hearing the house windows crack, the bricks bouncing and breaking, and he saw a portable grill skidding at great speed across the patio floor, banging into a wall. His father came running out of the house yelling, “Are you OK? Are you OK?”

“Yes,” Bill said, finally sitting on the ground, looking at the large hole in the brick wall. The hole was wide enough to drive a truck through, and the rear door of the house and the garage door were knocked loose and splintered. “But I think I hit somebody,” Bill said, getting up. “I’d better get out of here quick.” The other men and his mother were now all around him, asking him how he felt, wiping off the dirt and dust that covered him. But he insisted that he had probably hit and killed a man and that he had to leave; if the police arrived, he might be held for homicide, might be confined for months. So he ran through the house out the front door, across the gravel yard toward Martin Avenue where there were many large oleander bushes. He hid behind them for a few moments, watching lights turn on in neighboring houses, but he was confident that no one in those houses had seen him leave. He was excited, very tense, but miraculously unharmed by the explosions. He crouched behind the bushes for a few moments, then made his way carefully to Warren Avenue, then Mable Street. He was wearing dark slacks and a black polo shirt, his tree outfit, but he had of course left his shotgun at home, knowing that the men would clean it and hide it.

He ran across Speedway Boulevard and soon entered the central campus grounds of the University of Arizona, which was not far from his home and which he had attended less than fifteen years ago. He knew that at this hour, close to 10:00
P.M.
, there would be many summer students strolling around the grounds, some couples walking arm in arm, some students returning home from the library.

Soon he was among them, and he stopped running. He could not see anyone clearly in the semidarkness, and nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him as he walked along familiar paths, past familiar buildings. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead, breathing more easily as he walked, feeling again some of the peace and security that had been his when he belonged here. The students who now sat talking on the stone steps where he had once sat were as casually dressed as he was at this moment, and it was suddenly strange for him to be back—in a matter of minutes he had been blown out of a tree and had been swept back into the 1950s.

He was also aware that his reason for returning tonight was to be among strangers, to lose himself by moving with people in open spaces. A distinguished alumnus returns, he thought, savoring the absurdity, and then he paused briefly as he came to the Student Union Building, where he had once spent the hours between classes; and then he walked past the ROTC Building, from which he had led squads of Pershing riflemen wearing silver helmets and spit-polished boots. In those days, he remembered, he had been conditioned to shoot at Communists in Korea, and he had been able to display his rifle proudly before thousands of people as he and the other cadets marched into the football stadium to hang the flag before the game.

He continued on, seeing the Agriculture Building, where he had taken courses in agricultural engineering to prepare himself to run the family cotton farm that the government now controlled; and he also saw the tri-Delt sorority house, where he had dated a girl whose name he could not remember.

Then slowly but determinedly, he made his way to the Standard Oil Gas Station on University Street, where he knew there was a telephone booth, and there he called a man who would soon pick him up.

Bill hid for nearly a week, reading the newspapers and listening to the radio, but there was nothing about the death or injury of the bomber. Even if the police were deliberately keeping this fact secret, the Bonanno men had sources in hospitals who would probably have overheard talk of a death from shotgun wounds; but so far there were only discussions about the bombings. And while no one in the Bonanno house had any idea who was behind the destruction, the police seemed certain that the Banana War had extended to Tucson. The Tucson
Daily Citizen
, which in the past had published editorials urging Bonanno and his friends to leave town, was indignant over the bombs in its latest editorial.

A little more than two weeks after the publication of the editorial, there were two explosions in the rear of Peter Notaro’s home, splintering a patio gate and breaking two windows, but no one was injured. Neighbors told the police that two men had fled from the scene in a blue or green getaway car shortly before 10:15
P.M.
, but it was then too dark to see them clearly. When Notaro returned home, finding his wife and daughter frightened but unharmed, he assured the police that he had no idea who might be directing the bombings, although the police and local politicians continued to attribute the damage to a gangland war.

Tucson’s mayor, James R. Corbett, Jr., announced publicly that he would be “happy if underworld figures chose to live elsewhere.” The Democratic congressman, Morris K. Udall, appealed to J. Edgar Hoover to send more FBI agents to Tucson to deal with the Mafia, and Hoover promised that he would cooperate in every way possible. Former Senator Barry Goldwater, in a speech delivered to members of the Pima County Republican Club, criticized the Lyndon Johnson administration in general, and Attorney General Ramsey Clark in particular, for failing to deal adequately with organized crime in America, and Goldwater demanded that the “reign of the princes of the Cosa Nostra must end.”

In September 1968 there were four more bombings in Tucson: one was at an automobile company said to be patronized by hoodlums; a second was at a women’s wig salon that employed Mrs. Charles Battaglia; a third was at the home of a man associated with a mob-connected vending machine distributor; a fourth was at the home of an individual who had been one of Joseph Bonanno’s character witnesses in Bonanno’s citizenship case in 1954.

By October, as the anti-Mafia campaign continued and a citizen’s crime commission was formed, it was estimated that at least one fourth of Tucson’s 250,000 residents had heard at least one blast. Among the many speeches by politicians expressing alarm, only one man publicly doubted that the Mafia was involved in the bombings: he was G. Alfred McGinnis, a Republican candidate for Congress from the Second District, who postulated that youths might be responsible, using the situation for the bizarre kick of playing cops and robbers. McGinnis explained that he had lived in New York and Chicago during periods of Mafia warfare, “and I can tell you this—those guys are pros and when they bomb a home or a neighborhood, it does not result in a few broken windows or a damaged patio.”