Honor Thy Father (38 page)

Bill wanted to get a look at the East Meadow property, to scrutinize its condition and see if anyone was occupying it. Whether the house was still his was a complex issue not yet resolved by the courts, but Bill did not much care at this point one way or the other, knowing that he would never reoccupy it and knowing that if he were permitted to sell it the government could claim every penny. His trip to Long Island was more in the nature of a personal sightseeing trip, a pleasant way to pass the afternoon. Although he was committed to spend the evening with the Di Pasquales, where he would be joined for dinner by Frank Labruzzo’s widow, he would be leaving tomorrow morning for California, and after that he might not be seeing much of his Brooklyn relatives. It was possible that on his next visit to New York he would be preoccupied with the credit card trial, and he would then be staying in a hotel with his codefendant, Peter Notaro, and would spend most of the time that he was not in court with his attorneys. So he wanted to share what was left of this trip with those few close relatives he had in New York and to revisit certain places where he had once lived and where he had once nearly died. He was no less romantic than many soldiers about the battlefields of the past—except that his were made of concrete and were entrenched with tenements—and a few minutes after he pulled away from the curb at the Di Pasquale house, he approached the block that evoked for him the most haunting memory of his life.

“Remember this place?” his uncle asked, facetiously, as Bill paused at a stop sign, then moved slowly and cautiously forward. It was Troutman Street. At this time of day, in the early afternoon, it seemed abandoned, not a pedestrian in sight or even a car parked at the curb; and because the street was narrow and the tight row of brick and frame houses had no trees in front or much vegetation of any sort, there was something artificial and lifeless about the street—it looked almost like an old movie set. But when Bill reached the end of the block and looked to his right at a store on the corner, he was suddenly aware of the grim reality of Troutman Street. There, along a side wall covered with metal sheeting, were holes made by bullets that had been aimed at him on that freezing January night more than three years ago. He saw other traces of bullets along the sidewalk he remembered running over, running for his life, dashing south toward Knickerbocker, several bullets pounding into the pavement, ricocheting wildly, and as he looked at the street now he was reminded of how narrow it was, and he was amazed that the snipers had missed him from such close range. He felt his palms moist on the steering wheel, and, turning off Troutman Street, he continued to drive through other streets, following no particular direction while he carried on a conversation that he was paying little attention to.

He cruised past the Cypress Garden Restaurant, scene of the triple murder in 1967, and as he paused in front of it now he could see more bullet holes on the sidewalk, and also a sign in the window announcing that the restaurant was closed because its liquor license had been revoked. Continuing on to Roebling Street, Bill saw the spot where his grandfather, Salvatore Bonanno, had opened a bar shortly after arriving from Sicily in 1906, and he saw the public school that his father attended for one year, in 1911, at the age of six. On nearby Havemeyer Street and Metropolitan Avenue were the storefront clubs in which Joseph Bonanno had hung out as a young man in the 1920s, ready to join forces behind Maranzano in the Castellammarese War; and on Suydam Street, Bill drove past the church where his parents were married in 1931; and on Union and Havemeyer was the church where he himself was baptized in 1932, at four months of age. It was remarkable, Bill thought, how it was all here, clustered within so few blocks, the landmarks in the lives of three generations of Bonannos. These were the blocks to which thousands of Sicilian and Italian immigrants had come at the turn of the century to fulfill whatever fantasy they had about the American dream, and Bill remembered from his early boyhood in Brooklyn how noisy and crowded these blocks had been, remembered the pushcarts and games in the street and the mothers calling from tenement windows to their children below; but now, in 1969, the Italian neighborhoods in this area of Brooklyn were no longer characterized by noisy young people in the street but rather by the elderly who remained indoors, securing with locks what was left of their lives. There were still a few mafiosi here, but they too were old, and their children had moved to Queens or to the suburbs to avoid the encroaching blacks and Puerto Ricans and other newcomers who would perhaps find hope and opportunities along these streets that to Bill Bonanno seemed dated and dead.

As he drove, his uncle pointed to a building where he had once been in partnership in a coat factory, explaining that that was where he had met Marion Labruzzo, a seamstress, whom he had married in 1922. They later opened a factory of their own on Jefferson Street, he continued, eventually employing about forty people; he added that this building still existed in its original form and was flanked by what had been Charles Labruzzo’s butcher shop and the home that the Labruzzos occupied when Joseph Bonanno began courting Bill’s mother, Fay. In those days, the uncle recalled, his eyes lighting up, Joseph Bonanno was driving a new Graham-Paige car. Bill remembered snapshots of that car, and he also remembered very well the Labruzzo house from his boyhood visits to his grandparents’; and, though he was now headed in the opposite direction, he turned around and headed back toward Jefferson Street.

Soon Bill was parked in front of the red-brick house where he used to sit on summer days with his one-legged grandfather, and he remembered how the old man basked in the sun sipping beer, speaking Sicilian to the people who passed, and how when he hobbled up the street on crutches he would be followed by a pet chicken. On the opposite side of the street, where there was once a row of houses—in one of which snipers waited for several weeks in 1929 hoping to get a shot at Bill’s father—there was now only a high wall that blocked from view what appeared to be a commercial trucking firm or brewery or warehouse of some sort. To the right of the old Labruzzo house was the onetime coat factory, as his uncle had said, and next to the factory was the building in which Labruzzo’s butcher shop was located. Both buildings were now obviously vacant, with the windows of the shop painted black; but the six-bedroom Labruzzo house, which the family sold in 1947 for not much more than the $5,000 that Charles Labruzzo had paid for it in 1923, had curtains on the windows and seemed to be occupied.

Bill got out out of the car and walked to the door. Near the bell he saw the name Malendez. He rang the bill, which did not work, and so he knocked on the door. Within a few moments a thin dark man opened the door, looked at Bill, then at the car, his face crinkling with confusion.

“We used to live here,” Bill began, awkwardly, trying to smile in a reassuring way.

“Yes?” the man said.

“Many years ago,” Bill said, “and we’re just visiting New York. I wondered,” he continued, “if we could take a look inside.”

The man hesitated for just a fraction of a second before saying, “Yes,” and then he stepped aside. Bill, who was surprised by the man’s lack of skepticism, introduced himself, extending his hand. The man shook it, saying his name was Malendez. Speaking almost perfect English, Malendez explained that the house was now divided into apartments, and that since he was the only person at home now, Bill would only be able to see one apartment. Bill thanked him and took only a quick look into Malendez’s apartment, failing to find anything familiar about the room. Bill walked through the dark outside hallway, where he noticed the familiar staircase and the smooth banister that he used to slide down as a boy; and looking through a window at the rear of the hallway, he saw the yard where his grandfather kept a goat and several chickens. The yard, littered now with old tires and pieces of scrap metal, seemed smaller than Bill remembered it from his boyhood, and so did the house; but then he guessed that the memories from one’s youth magnified everything.

Bill turned and, thanking Malendez again, he departed. When he stepped onto the sidewalk he saw his uncle peering through the windows of the dark empty factory. They both walked to the corner, trying to peek through the blackened windows of what had been the butcher shop, but they could see nothing inside. They were about to turn around and head back to the car, when Bill saw two young Puerto Rican boys walking up Jefferson Street. They were in their early teens, lean and graceful.

“Do you live around here?” Bill asked.

One of them nodded.

“Do you know what’s inside this place?”

“I think they make records,” one of the boys said.

“What kind of records?”

“You know, music, man. Rock.”

“But the place is closed,” Bill said. “Nobody’s there.”

One of the youths regarded Bill suspiciously, looked at the way he was dressed, and then asked, “Hey, man, you a cop?”

Bill said that he was not, and then as they kept walking, he turned toward the car. It was nearly 3:00
P.M.
now and Bill knew that he had better start toward Long Island if he intended to be back in Brooklyn before darkness. He did not want to press his luck at night. He drove without delay through several blocks in Brooklyn, crossing quite unintentionally the corner of Leonard and Scholes streets near the spot where Perrone was shot. It has already been more than a year, Bill though—March 11, 1968, three days after Perrone’s thirty-ninth birthday. Perrone’s birthday was the same as that of Bill’s daughter, Felippa, and Bill knew that from now on he would never be able to look at his daughter’s birthday cake without also remembering Hank Perrone.

Within a half hour Bill was in Garden City, moving through the familiar streets that he had so often used in recent years to shake the police or FBI; and then he was in Hempstead, paused in front of the Tudor-style house at 61 Clairmont Street that his father had owned between the years 1936 and 1949. This house, which had obviously been kept in good repair by its present occupants, still had the vacant lot next door where Bill and Catherine had played, and also the birdbath that his father had bought, as well as the row of Christmas trees that his father had planted, uprooting one each December as he replanted another—trees that now were forty feet high.

“That house on the other side, the white one with the shutters, was where my scoutmaster used to live,” Bill said, pointing it out to his uncle. And then he inquired with a smile, “You didn’t know that
I
was once an honorable Cub Scout, did you?” He continued to reminisce for a moment, the motor idling. Then he stopped talking as his attention was drawn to his rearview mirror, and the car that was coming up the street with two men. It was a tan Chevrolet, and Bill and the others in his car were suddenly alert and waiting silently. But then the other car cruised past, its passengers paying no attention, and so Bill made a U-turn and proceeded on toward East Meadow.

Soon he reentered the quiet residential community that had been his official residence between 1963 and 1968, and moments later as he made a left turn on Tyler Avenue he saw his house. It had been ignored since he left it; the lawn was sprouting weeds and high grass, the bushes grown wild. The lawn had not been cut since Chuckie cut it more than a year ago, Bill thought, and the windows had not been washed in at least that length of time. He was half-tempted to get out and peek in, but when he saw a few neighborhood women walking with their children in his direction, he decided against it. He did not want it known that he had returned; and he was now not as curious about the house as he had been earlier in the day. He guessed that he had already seen too much of his past for one day; and as he looked at it he realized for the first time that he hated this house on Tyler Avenue. It had never been a happy home; in fact, of all the houses he had owned, this had been the center of the most tension and trouble, and it was possible that his troubles with it were not yet over. Bill had heard that the government might try to indict him for tax evasion on this property, inasmuch as he had arranged through Perrone to have the house payments made in Don Torrillo’s name, which could be defined as a fraudulent transferal of ownership. What he least needed now was another court case, and because of this house he might have one.

Without regret he left East Meadow, heading back to Brooklyn in silence as his uncle slept in one corner of the back seat. Bill was also tired, emotionally weary. He felt almost as if he had spent the afternoon roving through a graveyard, stepping between withered flowers and headstones bearing the names of his family, his friends, and himself.

At dinner he continued in a quiet mood, despite his best efforts to appear cheerful in front of Frank Labruzzo’s widow, and finally his aunt Marion commented on it, saying, “Son, you’re so serious—what’s the matter with you tonight?” He made a feeble excuse, but she continued to berate him in a way she felt was jovial and not offensive, unaware that she was bothering him, particularly when she said, tossing up her hands, “Oh, you used to be such fun when you came to town. You used to tell jokes and cut up and be the life of the party. What happened?” He continued to deny that he had changed, and after standing up to fill everyone’s glass with more wine, he tried to switch the subject. He commented on his aunt’s cut-glass wine goblets, saying that they were nicely designed and that his mother in Arizona had a set of glasses similar to these.

His aunt said that she was aware of that, recalling that they had bought the wine glasses from the same place many years ago. But his aunt added that his mother no longer had her set, having written in a recent letter that the glasses were destroyed when the home in Tucson was bombed.

After a late breakfast on the following morning, Bill was driven to the airport to catch the TWA noon flight for San Francisco. Included in his luggage was the dress he had bought for Rosalie at Altman’s. As usual, he traveled in the first-class compartment; while he might be able to save between $30 and $40 by traveling tourist-class, a saving that he might apply to the overdue milk bill or some other household expense, it would not occur to him to travel in any other way. Until he was down to his last dime, he would not economize in small ways, or live in the style of ordinary people. He was not an ordinary person. He might be many things both good and bad, but he assured himself that he was not ordinary, and he would not even allow himself to
appear
before a planeload of strangers as a man who might be interested in saving $30 or $40. On his epitaph he wanted no ordinary inscription, no hint that he had been a member in good standing with the anonymous multitudes during the midtwentieth century or that he had saved his pennies for a rainy day. He saved coins only for long-distance calls, and it occurred to him at this moment that an appropriate headstone for his grave would be a granite replica of a telephone booth.