Honor Thy Father (29 page)

On November 10, when Bill was released from jail, he went to his father and said that he was afraid that John Morale had left them. When the elder Bonanno suddenly turned pale, disbelieving, Bill did not pursue the discussion. He and his father would probably know soon enough, and his father meanwhile was informing the United States Attorney’s office that he would be leaving New York for a while, would be returning to Tucson to spend the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with his wife and younger son, whom he had not seen for a very long time.

A large crowd of people, including federal agents, newsmen, and dozens of curious citizens of Arizona, watched Joseph Bonanno step out of a jet at Tucson International Airport. If he had bodyguards with him, they were keeping their distance, and the impeccably dressed gray-haired Bonanno gave the appearance of a typical corporation executive traveling first-class—except in place of a briefcase he carefully carried in his right hand a white cardboard box containing Italian cookies. Bonanno was amazed by the size of the crowd, which had been alerted to his arrival either by a news report or by the presence of the many policemen and photographers waiting at the gate near the landing field. As the flashbulbs began to pop, Bonanno smiled and waved. When one reporter, trying to start Bonanno talking, asked what he was carrying in the box, there was laughter at Bonanno’s almost sheepish reply: “Cookies.”

Bonanno declined to comment on the latest speculation that he had spent most of his hiding months in Haiti, and he avoided answering other important questions, saying only that he was happy to be back again in Tucson. Then, spotting a taxicab that awaited him, he slowly made his way through the crowd toward the front of the terminal building, carrying only the box, his luggage evidently coming later with someone else. But before he got into the cab, he overheard a teen-age girl standing several feet away asking her friend, “Say, who was that guy, anyway—a movie star?”

Unable to resist replying, Bonanno turned toward her and said with a smile, “I’m Errol. Flynn’s younger brother.”

The casual return of Joseph Bonanno to Tucson, and the almost friendly greeting that he received at the airport, offended some of the leading citizens of the city. Among the most outraged was the editorial board of the Tucson
Daily Citizen
, which quickly made clear its position on the reappearance of its highly publicized resident. Under the headline
BONANNO is NOT WELCOME HERE
, the editorial read:

F
OR
R
OSALIE
B
ONANNO, THE COMING OF THE NEW YEAR
—1967—promised no relief from the grim reality of life as she had come to know it. Once the holidays were over, the men returned from their families to her home; and with their reappearance came the tension, the chain smoking, the nocturnal snoring. Sometimes as many as eight men were there, a few sleeping on the floor, and her children tripped over them in the morning on the way out to school. When the children were as disturbed as she by the snoring, they would often come into her bedroom, climb into bed beside her. One night Charles tripped in the darkness, hit his head on a piece of furniture, and in the morning Rosalie found blood all over the rug.

Bill was rarely home except on weekends, and she did not know exactly where he spent the nights, nor would she ask. She had become resigned, because she had little choice, to the fact that something strange and extraordinary was going on. It was a private war that had placed her and the men in the house under a kind of martial law. Fear and confusion dominated her emotions, her will to scream or run was stifled. She could not protest as she saw other people do on the nightly television news, marching through open streets demanding or denouncing; she could only try to endure this secret ordeal that encircled her and these men, although she sought refuge at night in her bedroom and sought a modicum of comfort during the day from the words uttered softly by her father-in-law, who seemed to be reading her mind when he said
pazienza
, patience,
coraggio
, courage. He spoke these words almost in the form of an exhortation, spoke them as a high priest might at benediction; but she could not respond to her father-in-law. At night, in bed, she quietly cried.

She was terrified, fearful for her husband’s life. She hated him, loved him, worried, and prayed. She wondered why he and not one of the other men went on these mysterious missions that took several days. She knew that he had recently been in Montreal because there was an article in the paper reporting that he and five of his men were spotted by the Canadian police and were held on suspicion of having a conference with Montreal mafiosi. Bill and his men were deported from Canada after receiving a suspended sentence for illegal possession of firearms.

He returned briefly to East Meadow, explaining nothing, and then he was gone again, behaving in a way she had never seen before; he was totally preoccupied, desperate, a man possessed. At unexpected moments she would be notified that he wanted to talk to her, and, leaving the children in care of the men, she would drive to a certain telephone booth at a shopping center in Long Island or to a particular booth in Macy’s in Manhattan where at a precise moment he would call. His calls were sometimes for mere conversation, sometimes for arranging a place where they could meet in person; and sometimes, if he wanted to make love, which was often, he would ask her to meet him at a certain motel.

Once she remembered meeting him and, after getting into his car, hearing him request that she get into the back and lay on the floor. He did not want her to see where he was taking her. They drove for fifteen or twenty minutes through the dark streets of Long Island or Queens; then the road seemed suddenly softer, smoother, quiet, and she got the impression, though she did not know why, that they were somewhere close to the World’s Fair grounds, perhaps inside the grounds, which would have been vacant and clustered with empty buildings at this time, long after the fair had closed. He stopped the car, told her to cover her eyes with her hands. Then he led her into a building, up steps, through a long corridor, turned left and stopped. She heard a door latch click and, when she opened her eyes, she was standing in a dimly lit room that was sparsely furnished but had a bed.

One night much later, in East Meadow as she slept in her room, she was abruptly awakened in the middle of the night by hands caressing her body. She felt someone kissing her, and was about to scream. Then she realized that it was Bill. He wanted her almost desperately, more than she had ever remembered him wanting her before, and he did not even take the time to remove all of his clothes. In the middle of their lovemaking, she felt against her breast an object that was cold and heavy. After a few seconds, she realized that it was a gun. It must have fallen out of his pocket or holster, and she knew it must be loaded. She waited, holding her breath; she had never been more frightened.

After he left her that night she lay awake until daybreak, her heart pounding, her head throbbing with shock and disbelief.

Winter extended slowly, uncertainly, maddeningly. She never knew what to expect or what was expected of her. There was great excitement one afternoon when a suit that was believed to be Bill’s was discovered in the back seat of one of the men’s cars, but nobody remembered who put it there or why it was there or if the suit had been placed there by the enemy as a way of announcing that the owner of the suit would no longer be needing it. Rosalie was in her room when she heard the men’s frantic conversation, and then her father-in-law hurriedly approached her door and asked her what color suit Bill had been wearing when he last left the house. Rosalie said she did not know. There was shocked silence from the elder Bonanno, and also from the men who stood behind him in the hall.
She did not know!
It was as if she were guilty of some atrocious act of carelessness and neglect, and as she watched their faces register signs of disappointment or disapproval, she wanted to shout at them
How in God’s name am I to know what he was wearing? I hardly see him anymore because of you people!
and she was tempted to tell them to leave her house immediately, she had had enough of their damnable little war and their endless intrigue. But she said nothing. She too was overcome with fear that something had happened to Bill.

Late that night, Bill returned safely with Carl Simari, seeming casual and unconcerned. He spent the following afternoon at home, conversed at length with his father, then he was gone again. Nobody mentioned the suit, and she did not question him about it during the few moments they were alone together in the bedroom. She was determined to avoid becoming a victim of the madness in this house, the manias, the obsessions with tiny details, the things that preoccupied her father-in-law more than anyone else—his mind seemed always in motion, he was always talking to the men in a strange oracular manner that confused her, he missed nothing that was going on. He was even aware that one of her husband’s watches was missing from Bill’s top bureau drawer, and he asked her about it. Rosalie had been carrying the jeweled watch around with her in her purse, explaining to her father-in-law that her own watch was in need of repair. But she wondered what her father-in-law was doing in her husband’s bureau, in her bedroom; and she also wondered if he suspected that she intended to hock the watch, which was one of four expensive ones that Bill owned. And if she had the nerve to do such a thing, she would have felt justified, for with Bill away so much she was always short of cash, lacking the money for personal things that she and the children needed, and not being able to ask her father-in-law for money because this would have embarrassed her husband, would have reflected poorly on his efficiency and capacity as a provider. She also knew that she could not relay hints to her father-in-law through Carl Simari because, as she already had discovered, it was a violation of protocol for Carl to go to the elder Bonanno directly without first clearing it through Bill. Protocol and male ego were driving Rosalie Bonanno to a breaking point, and yet only once during the winter did she lose control and complain openly about her shortage of spending money.

This occurred early one evening as a friend of Rosalie’s, a woman of about her own age, stopped by the house to accompany Rosalie to a movie. As Rosalie was leaving, she informed her father-in-law that she would be going in her girl friend’s car because “her car has gas in the tank.” When Rosalie returned home that night, the elder Bonanno was there to meet her, furious. She had humiliated him in front of the other woman, he said, embarrassed him, and had inadvertently revealed personal matters that should never have been discussed outside the family. Rosalie began to tremble as she stood facing him—never before had she been directly criticized by him—and as he perceived the effect he was having on her, he quickly softened his tone, became conciliatory.

Life had been very difficult for her, he conceded, and he said he understood her frustrations and grievances. But he reminded her that these conditions were temporary; things would improve. He pleaded with her to not crack under the pressure, saying that when she was a young girl he sensed that she had the character and strength to withstand adversity, and that was why he had been pleased by her marriage to his son.
Pazienza
, he repeated, slowly stressing each syllable.
Coraggio
.

She nodded, forcing a smile. He offered to give her money, but she refused, backing away.

In the spring, there was a front-page article in
The New York Times
with a photograph of Joseph Bonanno and a headline that read
BONANNO REGAINS POWER IN MAFIA GANG
.

The elder Bonanno and the men seemed genuinely pleased by the article, and there were four copies of the
Times
around the house that day. But if the situation had indeed improved for the Bonanno organization, Rosalie could see no convincing signs of it at home. There was no less tension, no fewer men, no lessening of security arrangements. Her father-in-law rarely left the house except to make a phone call. Bill also continued to be away most of the time, and Rosalie was forced to borrow money from her mother.

The prolonged pressure and newspaper publicity now also seemed to be having some effect on her children, who came home from school complaining of small fights and the fact that the other children insisted on calling the Bonanno boys “banana.” Of her sons, only Tory seemed to adjust completely to the overcrowded conditions at home and to accept as normal the presence of bodyguards such as Carl Simari in the family. One afternoon when Tory, Felippa, and a young cousin were sitting on the floor in the library, having decided to play “house,” Tory was overheard to say: “OK, you play the mommy… you play the daddy… and I’ll play Carl.”

The prospect of another hot summer spent in the house in East Meadow began to depress Rosalie before the summer had even begun. She did not want the children to be secluded with the men and cigar smoke from June to September, and she did not want to spend hours every day over the sink and stove. She showed symptoms of her growing tendency toward rebellion during May when on two occasions she deliberately returned late from shopping, letting her father-in-law and his aides wait for their dinner. She surprised herself by staying away until eight and nine in the evening, and in June she was again late on two more occasions, forcing the men to cook for themselves. Peter Magaddino had often talked proudly about his career as an army cook in the Pacific during World War II, and Rosalie decided to let Magaddino display his talents in her kitchen. On returning home she would explain that she had been visiting her mother, who was not feeling well, or that she had taken a long ride in the car in an attempt to calm her nerves, which in most instances was the truth; except that Rosalie discovered that she usually ended up in commuter traffic jams when driving, and this made her more nervous. The men seemed sympathetic, and Magaddino evidently proved to be an adequate substitute.

But what happened in July to provoke her to a point of doing the wildly dramatic thing that she did had nothing to do with the men. It had to do with a woman. Rosalie was in the kitchen in the early afternoon when the phone rang, and a woman’s voice asked for Bill. Rosalie recognized the German accent immediately, and she felt her right hand shaking as she held the phone, her palm perspiring. It was Bill’s former girl friend from Arizona, now back in the United States on a visit from Europe, calling to say hello. Rosalie was stunned by the woman’s cool and casual approach, and she felt threatened by the woman’s return. As calmly as she could, Rosalie said that Bill was not home and was not expected home at any specific time. Then, not knowing what else to add, Rosalie said good-bye and hung up.