Honor Thy Father (56 page)

It was therefore astonishing to such theorists to read on June 29, 1970, that approximately 40,000 people gathered in New York’s Columbus Circle on Italian-American Unity Day to proclaim their pride in their Italian heritage and express deep resentment at the press and law enforcement authorities that concentrated on the Mafia. The Mafia, some protesters said, was only a small part of organized crime, while other protesters said there was no Mafia at all—it was merely a creation of the media and the FBI. The gathering was attended largely, but not exclusively, by Italo-Americans; in the crowd were representatives from Jewish groups, black groups, who shared the view that the government’s crime busters had gone too far with their harassing, their eavesdropping and stereotyping. Representative Allard K. Lowenstein of Nassau County, Long Island, was cheered when he said, “Anyone who doesn’t understand what America owes to Italy doesn’t understand America.” Harlem’s Adam Clayton Powell told the crowd, “This nation is for all, not just the Wasps,” and former New York Controller Mario A. Procaccino said, “Don’t let anyone imagine that when looters, arsonists, and bombers are being coddled and treated like heroes, we are going to stand by and permit the smearing and harassment of innocent people whose sole crime is that they are related, friends, or neighbors, or just happen to be Italian-American.” But the greatest applause came near the end of the program when the five-foot-six-inch, round-faced, unprepossessing figure of Joseph Colombo stood to tell the crowd: “This day belongs to you—to you the people.” Then he added, with a simple directness that struck a responsive chord and loud cheering: “You are organized now, you are one. And nobody can take you apart anymore.”

Colombo was not talking to people who necessarily justified the Mafia and loathed the FBI—in fact Colombo himself said he respected the FBI, called it “the greatest organization in the country” except when “they’re framing our children and harassing our pregnant women”; Colombo’s audience was rather part of America’s silent majority, its hardhats, and World War II veterans, its civil servants, small-home owners, middleclass housewives who had apparently felt, more than was previously realized, acute embarrassment and humiliation during the last decade over the enormous publicity given to gangsters with Italian names. And so, quite apart from any self-interest that Colombo may have had in turning the spotlight off the Mafia, he was expressing a desire shared by many thousands of citizens who had no personal stake in the Mafia, who had no relatives connected with it, but who also felt unconnected from the larger America that was the focus of their aspirations and identity. They were voiceless, powerless, frustrated; most of them felt that they had been playing by the rules and losing. They were unrecognized by the thousands of Italo-Americans who had made it in America and who were climbing the social ladder behind the Irish; and the media, which was largely influenced by Jews and was very sensitive to anti-Semitism, was not nearly so sensitive to issues that the lower-middle-class and middle-class Italians considered prejudicial.

In Washington, there was only one senator of Italian origin; in the House of Representatives, only eleven of 435 members. There was not an influential Italo-American in the Cabinet or White House, and among the protesters in Columbus Circle listening to Colombo was one man carrying a sign announcing that there were no Italians on the city’s board of education. While the federal government passed laws to help the urban blacks escape substandard schools and ghetto housing, it would not be the legislators or newspaper publishers or network executives who would be personally affected by such legislation—the blacks would never move in large numbers into the white legislators’ segregated neighborhoods or into their children’s private schools or their country clubs. After the son of New Jersey Governor William T. Cahill—who had campaigned hard against organized crime—was twice arrested on marijuana charges, the governor supported a bill reducing the penalty for possessors of small amounts of marijuana, and this bill was passed by the New Jersey legislature into law. But crimes committed by the sons of alleged mafiosi were vigorously prosecuted, and it was this belief that caused many people to sympathize with Joseph Colombo and to support his protest after his son had been arrested in what the elder Colombo denounced as an “FBI frame-up.” And Colombo’s characterization would eventually be substantiated in a Brooklyn federal court when, on the fifth day of the trial in which his son was accused of plotting to melt down silver coins into more valuable ingots, the government’s chief witness—a former coin dealer named Richard W. Salamone—admitted that he had falsely accused the younger Colombo. Salamone told a startled courtroom that he had implicated him because the FBI, which was anxious to “get” the son, had promised to help Salamone recover $50,000 that he had lost in a business transaction, would help him find a job, and would return to him his confiscated pistol permit. The FBI’s failure to back these promises influenced Salamone in recanting his previous testimony, although it would quickly lead to his arrest, and that of another government witness, after the jury acquitted Joseph Colombo, Jr.

One month after the Columbus Circle rally, with the growing Italian-American Civil Rights League showing promise of political influence, Attorney General John N. Mitchell sent a confidential memorandum to all agency heads, including the FBI director, instructing them to stop using the words “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra” because the terms offended “decent Italian-Americans.” Encouraged by this decision, officers of the league—the elder Colombo was not an officer but his eldest son, Anthony, was the vice-president—received similar assurance after writing to the Ford Motor Company, which was one of the sponsors of ABC’s television series, “The F.B.I.” The league also gained concessions from advertising agencies whose commercials, in the league’s opinion, portrayed Italians in a demeaning way. When a Staten Island newspaper,
Advance
, published a series of articles on mafiosi residing on Staten Island, noisy picketers from the league appeared outside the newspaper building, interfered with delivery trucks, and urged that the author of the series be dismissed and that future references to “Mafia” or “Cosa Nostra” be banned. The
Advance
, which did not comply with either demand, obtained an injunction against the picketing, but not before a fracas had occurred between league members and the police. Among those arrested was the league’s president, Natale Marcone, a fifty-seven-year-old former union official who lives on Staten Island.

The New York Times
’s plant on the West Side was also picketed, and spokesmen for the league later met with
Times
’s executives to complain about certain articles and the use of Italian “labels” to describe a portion of organized crime. While the league’s representatives were told that under no circumstances would the
Times
respond to pressure tactics, the managing editor A. M. Rosenthal said that the newspaper was sensitive to all aspects of discrimination in America and that it would review its performance with reference to Italo-Americans to see if there were deficiencies.

In the months that followed, while “Mafia” still appeared in the
Times
’s news columns, it did so with somewhat less frequency than before, being alternated with such terms as “organized crime ‘family.’ “ The
Times
also published certain articles that Joseph Colombo, Sr., approved of, one being a lengthy article about the league itself. The article, though not ignoring the criminal charges against Colombo, concentrated on the league’s growth, its aims, and its fund-raising charity drives, hospital construction, its contributions to black neighborhood groups, Spanish-speaking groups, antinarcotics education programs, and its close liaison with the Jewish Defense League. It was estimated to have 45,000 dues-paying members around the nation, and the most active members in its various chapters were called “captains”: of the 2,000 captains, 200 were said to be Jewish and 90 were black. The league had raised about $400,000 from members’ dues, and $500,000 from a charity show at which Frank Sinatra and several other show business personalities entertained the audience of 5,000 at the Felt Forum in New York. The audience included New York’s deputy mayor, Richard R. Aurelio; Paul O’Dwyer, a prominent Democrat; Ed McMahon, the television personality; and several hundred league members among whom, of course, was Joseph Colombo, Sr. The joke that received perhaps the biggest laugh was delivered by the black comedian Godfrey Cambridge who told the crowd: “I got a strange invitation to this thing—a rock came through my window.”

A few months after the show, Joseph Colombo was named “Man of the Year for 1970” by
The Tri-Boro Post
, a weekly newspaper that circulates in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. At a dinner marking the occasion—a $125-a-plate affair that netted the league $101,000—Colombo received a bronze plaque honoring him as the “guiding spirit of Italian-American unity.”

But despite such awards and the progress of the league, law enforcement authorities continued to pursue Joseph Colombo; and Colombo believed that the growth of the league and its persistent picketing of FBI headquarters had so offended federal agents that they were more determined than ever to win a conviction against him and to remove him from the scene by a long term in prison. After the announcement of his Man of the Year award, he was arrested in connection with a jewel theft that had occurred three years before in Garden City, Long Island; he was accused of “mediating” between quarreling participants in the $750,000 jewel robbery, and, for his services, he supposedly received a fee of $7,500. Colombo was also arrested with several other men by the FBI on charges of operating a $5-million-a-year gambling business. After he was released on $25,000 bail, Colombo left the court and went directly to FBI headquarters to join the picket line. While walking, he spoke with newspapermen, repeating his often-expressed opinion that he was innocent of all accusations, that there was no such thing as a Mafia in America, and that the government’s law enforcement authorities were prejudiced against Italo-Americans. In an interview he gave to a reporter from the
Times
, he pointed out that when General Electric was proven guilty of price-fixing, its bosses were merely fined; but when the government was dealing with Italo-Americans, it was far less genteel.

Such pleas of persecution which Colombo repeated on radio programs and also on television on the “Dick Cavett Show,” were considered ridiculous by many Italo-Americans around the nation, and among this group was State Senator John J. Marchi, a Republican of Staten Island. He criticized the producer of
The Godfather
for agreeing to delete “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra” from the movie script, adding: “Apparently you are a ready market for the league’s preposterous theory that we can exorcise devils by reading them out of the English language.” Even some of the “devils” were said to be disconcerted by Colombo’s campaign, although they were possibly envious of the publicity he was receiving and the money that the league was accumulating. Carlo Gambino was one of those rumored to be upset by Colombo’s tactics, seeing no wisdom in publicly berating law enforcement authorities, without whose cooperation organized crime could not exist. Gambino was of the old school, and like many ancient Sicilians he was something of a stoic, a believer in patient suffering, acting quietly, saying nothing.
Omertà
. Colombo, American-born and relatively young, was suddenly breaking with tradition. Colombo had adopted the style of the civil rights movement, was staging his campaign in the street in front of television cameras; and Gambino, who had seen many young men come and go in his lifetime, wondered.

Bill Bonanno, 3,000 miles away in California, carefully followed the newspaper reports of Colombo’s pickets, but as yet he had no opinion, waiting to see the final results. So far the lawyers had managed to keep Colombo free on bail, except for two short terms in jail, and no one could doubt that Colombo’s publicity had brought national attention and donations to the league, and perhaps picketing FBI headquarters had not been a bad idea—for years the federal agents had played a ruthless game, and, regardless of the manner in which the agents might retaliate, they could not do much that they had not already done. Bill recalled David Hale’s bombing escapades in Tucson, remembered Hale’s plan to have Notaro killed with a crossbow, and Bill wondered what David Hale’s counterparts in the FBI were planning in New York.

W
HEN
B
ILL
B
ONANNO FINALLY RECEIVED OFFI
CIAL word that he was to report to prison on the following Monday—January 18, 1971—he was relieved and even pleased. The waiting had been almost unbearable during the last months of 1970. To make matters worse, he had received during that period several calls from New York indicating an approximate date of surrender, then later calls delaying that date
after
he had already been given farewell parties by relatives and friends in California. There was nothing more embarrassing than to be the central attraction in a crowded room laden with laughter, tension, and sadness, a scene that culminated after dinner with toasting and tearful farewells and embraces; and then, days later, to see many of those same people again.

This had occurred three times during the winter of 1970, and after the third party and prison delay he told Rosalie to tell friends who might call that he had already gone to jail; and for days afterward, he sat in the house with the shades down watching television with the children, not coming to the phone, which Rosalie answered, not venturing outdoors even at night. These had been the most humiliating hours of his final weeks of freedom, a time when he had truly withdrawn from the world, feeling useless and worthless, an emotional drain on everyone close to him. He had long ago turned in the Cadillac that he had leased for his final month, had solved every problem that he was capable of solving, had said everything that he was going to say to Rosalie and the children. He was psychologically ready for life behind bars; still, from September through December, week by week, he had been inexplicably detained, tortured by time, and it was slowly eroding the pleasant memories that he had planned to carry into confinement.

He hoped to remember most of all the previous summer, during which he, Rosalie, and the children had taken several long motor trips sightseeing through California. They had also spent a week cruising on a large houseboat, accompanied by his sister, Catherine, his sister-in-law Ann and their families. He had driven down to Arizona to visit the elder Bonannos, and though his father was restricted to the Tucson area, he assured Bill that he would look after Rosalie and the children during Bill’s absence. Bill’s brother, Joseph, had meanwhile moved from Tucson to an apartment in San Jose, and Rosalie’s mother planned to fly to California for an extended stay as soon as Bill had gone to jail.

Fortunately, with help from family and friends, Bill and Rosalie managed to buy a ranch-style home in a new development near San Jose; it was a four-bedroom house on a street with many children and friendly neighbors, and Rosalie was as contented as she could be under the circumstances.

In the fall, the children returned to school and became more preoccupied with their own activities. Bill’s oldest son, Charles, nearly thirteen, the most ingratiating of the Bonanno boys, quickly made friends in the neighborhood and he seemed to be doing better in the present school than he had in the last one. Charles continued to build cages for the endless number of pets under his custody, and he still collected Blue Chip stamps toward the acquisition of new gadgets, having already gotten the electric lawnmower that he had saved for during the previous year.

Joseph, almost ten, was as studious as ever, and his asthma had improved somewhat since undergoing hypnotic treatments from a physician and since Rosalie had asked that guests not smoke in the house. But Joseph was still fundamentally a loner, and recently while playing in the garage he had discovered a bullet, had tinkered with it until it exploded, burning his fingers.

Tory, seven, was becoming huskier and bolder, and Bill continued to see his own boyhood image through Tory’s manner and appearance. Tory, like Charles, had quickly made new friends, seemed adept at sports, and he had made his debut on the block by hitting a baseball through a neighbor’s window. Felippa, six, was becoming taller and thinner; she was no less attached to Bill, and he was painfully aware in advance of how much he would miss her.

Though Rosalie was now qualified to work as a computer programmer, she had been unable to find a job in the San Jose area that paid enough to cover the expenses of full-time help at home. She also did not want the children to be without her the first year Bill was away, and so she concluded, after awkward discussions with Bill, that she would apply for welfare. Bill was unhappy at first, but he was beyond such vanity at this point. The government claimed all his assets, his car, his landholdings in Arizona; he was bankrupt, could not earn a dime that was not subject to back taxes, and so he soon accepted the idea that, since the government was taking him out of circulation, it could at least help support his family while he was away.

He had several times planned to explain to the children why he was going to jail, but during the entire summer and fall he managed to avoid it, partly because the children never questioned him about it and partly because there seemed no way of discussing the subject without degrading himself in their eyes. Bill’s dilemma was that while he wanted his children to respect the law, he did not want them to disrespect him.

He wanted them to understand that the law was created for the majority of people, and that there were those who committed acts that the law opposed and so those people were penalized; but he also wanted them to know that the law often changed, that what was disallowed now might be permitted a few years from now. He thought of how radically things had changed in his own lifetime with reference to social mores and customs, marriage and sex, literature, films. He remembered that once he had been expelled from boarding school because he led a group of students into
Forever Amber
, a film that now, in a period of permissiveness and nudity, was mild indeed. He had been born near the end of Prohibition when moralists were still condemning the vices of alcohol, yet now liquor was not only legal and acceptable but was a substantial source of income to the government that prior to 1933 had opposed it. And Bill had just read that New York State was going into the off-track betting business, attempting to eliminate bookmakers and absorb the profits from this enterprise that generations of district attorneys had called a racket, an exploiter of working men, a source of deprivation to their families. Next, Bill was sure, the government would try to take over the numbers game, and the drug market—it was already pushing methadone as a heroin cure—and the point was not that lawmakers were unjustified in doing what they deemed socially beneficial, but rather that they were endorsing the very items that they had not long ago abhorred. They were changing the laws with regard to acts that thousands of men long dead had been arrested for doing—it was all a matter of timing, Bill thought morosely, sitting behind lowered shades in his living room, it was a matter of being at the right place, the right time, and being on the winning side of wars, and having enough money to avoid using a credit card offered by Perrone, and having enough sense to not sign the name “Don A. Torrillo.”

Bill had no quarrel with the jury that had convicted him. It had concentrated on those months when he had carried Torrillo’s card, had weighed the evidence against him during that time of retreat from New York with a “contract” on his life, and his thoughts at that time had not been overly concerned with the judiciousness of signing another man’s name on Diners’ Club charge slips. But his acts during those months were related to the pressures of the Banana War, which had its origins and sources of conflict years before he had moved to New York, years before he had even been born—his whole life was interwoven with the past, and for this past he would spend four years in prison; but there was no simple way to explain all this to his children. The only thing for him to do was to begin serving the sentence so that he could be done with it. And after his release in 1974, he would hopefully begin again in another direction. He had no idea what he would do when he got out of jail, at forty-one, but he had plenty of time ahead to think about that.

And so after the many delays in the fall and winter of 1970, he was relieved to learn that he was to surrender on Monday, January 18, to the federal marshal’s office in downtown Los Angeles. It was finally definite, precise, real. He told Rosalie, and she reacted quietly and made plans for a final family gathering on the Sunday before his Monday flight to Los Angeles. Bill’s mother was then staying at Catherine’s house, and the only person who would be unable to attend the dinner would be Bill’s father in Arizona, which was why Bill flew to Tucson on Thursday to say good-bye.

Bill was accompanied by his brother, and they were met at the Tucson airport by Peter Notaro, who was driving the elder Bonanno’s 1970 Buick Riviera. Notaro would also be surrendering in a few days, having been directed to report to a prison in Texarkana, Texas. Notaro seemed casual and resigned; it was only a year, and Bill kidded him about it, saying that if
he
had gotten only a year he could have done it standing on his head.

At the Bonanno home on East Elm Street at the patio gate, Bill was embraced by his father, who seemed thinner, somewhat drawn, but his tanned face was still strong and handsome, and he wore trimly tailored Western pants, a bright shirt, and cowboy boots. After a light lunch with wine, they drove to the elder Bonanno’s government-liened 1,110-acre cotton farm beyond the town, where they walked slowly and did not have to concern themselves with the possibility of electronic bugging. Bill told his father of Rosalie’s plans to remain at home with the children, and the elder Bonanno again assured him not to worry about any problems that might arise. Bill explained that after surrendering in Los Angeles he would probably be flown to New York to the federal prison on West Street, where he would be available to stand trial on charges of having fraudulently transferred the ownership of the East Meadow house. Bill would plead guilty, and he thought that possibly more time would be added to his term but that soon after the trial he might be shipped back to California to complete his term at the federal prison on Terminal Island, in San Pedro. There he could be visited regularly by Rosalie and the children, perhaps as regularly as twice a month, and his separation from them and from the outside world would not seem so distant and decisive.

The more Bill talked, the less depressing it all seemed, although he noticed that his father was not saying much as they walked through the fields, with Notaro and his brother walking a few paces behind. His father made general comments, nodded often as Bill talked, but Bill had no idea what his father was thinking or feeling until after they returned to the house. The sun was fading then, the late-afternoon wind was blowing harder through the trees, kicking up dust in the patio where they were sitting. Then, turning to his father, Bill said that he had better begin packing certain things that he wanted to take with him; it was getting close to the hour when Bill was due at the airport.

His father followed him into the hall and stood silently in the doorway of what had once been Bill’s bedroom, watching Bill opening and closing drawers, tying his necktie in front of the mirror, then putting on his jacket. His father suddenly seemed shaken and pale as he watched, and Bill said finally, “Look, I can cancel this plane, I can get a later reservation…” But the elder Bonanno quickly shook his head.

“Then, let’s say good-bye here,” Bill said, not wanting to do so in front of his brother and Notaro.

Joseph Bonanno stepped forward, put his arms around Bill and kissed him. Then the elder Bonanno quickly turned with tears in his eyes; he walked into the bathroom, closing the door gently. Bill stood in the middle of the room, feeling numb and unsteady. He picked up the suitcase and, from the hall, told Notaro to start up the car. After Notaro and Joseph Jr. left the house, Bill walked toward the door, but stopped when he heard his father behind him crying softly,
Dio ti binidici
, God should bless you,
Dio ti binidici
.

Bill paused but he did not look at his father. He left the house and walked toward the car.

It was foggy and damp at daybreak on Monday, and the children had breakfast with Bill and did not go to school. They knew that they would not be seeing him again for a long time, but only Felippa cried. She had had nightmares during the weekend and was so sick that Rosalie put her back to bed.

Though Rosalie pleaded with Bill to let her go with him to Los Angeles, or to at least accompany him to the airport in San Francisco, Bill insisted that she remain at home. After breakfast, his brother Joseph arrived, remaining in the car as Bill said good-bye, kissing each of the children quickly, then kissing Rosalie, who burst into tears as he left the house.

At the airport, because of the fog, his plane was delayed. Bill was wearing a new yellow shirt, a silk tie, and his best suit, a well-tailored gray pin-stripe which partially concealed his excessive weight; and, as he sat in the plane after saying goodbye to Joseph, he would have passed for one of the many executives flying to Los Angeles for a Monday-morning conference. It was a commuter plane and the passengers had an easy familiarity with the stewardesses, the plane, and each other, nodding and smiling as they sat down, but Bill was grim and depressed, which he had never remembered himself being on an airplane, and he ignored the man next to him who in a jovial way was trying to discuss the Super Bowl football game played on the previous day.

Landing in Los Angeles, Bill walked through the terminal carrying one suitcase and took a taxi to the federal building at North Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. A guard stood at the door, and Bill asked directions to the federal marshal’s office; arriving, he saw two signs, one marked “civil” and pointing to the left, another marked “criminal” and pointing to the right. Bill headed to the right, stopping when he came to the desk of a deputy marshal on whose uniform was a name tag reading “Ernest Newman.”