Part 13 (1/2)

”You don't trust me?”

”Store policy,” she said.

He reached into his pocket and handed her two twenty-dollar bills and watched her disappear with the money and the dress. As he stood waiting he thought it odd that he was supposed to trust her when she obviously did not trust him; she had now gone off with his money and the merchandise presumably to record the sale and wrap the garment, leaving him with no proof that he had paid her, and while he realized that he was stretching a point, he was nonetheless irritated by the woman's att.i.tude. If he were dealing in his his world, he knew that he would never have parted with the money until he had the merchandise in hand; it would have been a simultaneous exchange. But as he thought more about it, he suspected that he was exaggerating the saleswoman's suspicion of him. Or perhaps he was reacting automatically to salespeople, remembering his unhappy experience with Torrillo's credit card at Bloom's store in Tucson. He stopped his brooding when he saw the woman returning with the package; and as he left Altman's he decided that the next time Rosalie wanted a dress, she would buy it herself. world, he knew that he would never have parted with the money until he had the merchandise in hand; it would have been a simultaneous exchange. But as he thought more about it, he suspected that he was exaggerating the saleswoman's suspicion of him. Or perhaps he was reacting automatically to salespeople, remembering his unhappy experience with Torrillo's credit card at Bloom's store in Tucson. He stopped his brooding when he saw the woman returning with the package; and as he left Altman's he decided that the next time Rosalie wanted a dress, she would buy it herself.

It was mild and sunny along the sidewalk, and since Bill had little to do for the next hour he decided to leave the car in the garage and to take a leisurely stroll through midtown Manhattan, which he had not done in years, and which if he had tried to do a year ago would surely have been suicidal. Although it was not quite noon, he could see that the early-lunch crowd was moving toward luncheonettes and restaurants, and there were people standing at the curb waving and whistling at cabs. There was a pace and pressure about New York that did not exist in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or any other city, and although he had always hated New York, he was at this moment pleased to be back, briefly, knowing that tomorrow he would be gone. He was now a tourist, and as he walked up Fifth Avenue he recited the tourists' favorite cliche, hoping that he would never have to live here again, not as a resident nor as an inmate in a prison.

Everything about New York was more difficult, more expensive, more exhausting. The town was tougher on everyone-cabbies and truckmen, businessmen and waiters, secretaries, and cops and gangsters. People came to New York looking for big money and big deals, but they usually died early as a result-it was a killer town, no less lethal to cops than robbers. Bill guessed that the life expectancy of the mafiosi in New York was less than in other places; those men lucky enough to escape the bullets usually died prematurely of heart ailments. Bill had recently read that Thomas Eboli, fifty-eight, reputed aspirant to Vito Genovese's t.i.tle, had collapsed at a crime hearing and had been taken by stretcher to a hospital, and Bill was almost willing to bet that there was not a don or underboss approaching sixty in New York who was not suffering from a heart condition or from high blood pressure. Whenever the police searched Mafia officers for concealed weapons, they usually discovered instead small bottles of heart-stimulant pills. Carlo Gambino had a chronic cardiac ailment, and Bill had just heard that Paul Sciacca, fifty-nine, was also suffering from heart trouble, which was one reason why Sciacca was a poor replacement for the ailing Di Gregorio. In the final a.n.a.lysis, it was not only the government that was bothering the Mafia-it was more the day-to-day pressure of living in New York, a pressure unknown to seventy-seven-year-old Stefano Magaddino in Buffalo, or seventy-two-year-old Zerilli in Detroit, or seventy-one-year-old Paul De Lucia in Chicago.

On Forty-second Street Bill headed west toward Times Square, and he was soon surprised to discover how many familiar buildings had been demolished or refaced in this ever-changing city. The Paramount theater, which he remembered as a boy, was gone, and he also regretted that a new building was replacing the once-elegant Astor where his wedding reception had been held.

Turning east again along Forty-second Street, heading back toward the garage, Bill noticed ah upper-story sign that identified a travel agency that was partly owned by an old friend, and he decided to go up and say h.e.l.lo. In past years his friend had often tried to interest Bill in certain propositions in the Caribbean and elsewhere, but Bill had always been too busy. But now he was curious whether the offers were still open-in fact, he was more curious about the offers than about specific proposals, realizing that because of the court restrictions on his travel he was really in no position to accept anything; and yet he still wanted to hear what his friend had to say, to know whether or not he was still a friend.

But after he had approached the receptionist, he was told that his friend was out of the city and would not return until the following week. Bill was disappointed but did not show it.

”Is there any message?” she asked.

”Tell him that Bill from California was here, and I'll get in touch with him later.”

”Any last name, sir?” she asked, writing on a pad.

”It's not necessary,” he said. ”Just say that Bill stopped by. From California. He'll know.”

The receptionist smiled at him, seemed to be impressed by his suntan, his suit, his manner, the mystery of his name. Bill from California. He smiled back and left.

Less than an hour later, he was in Brooklyn, in another world. The buildings were lower, the sky larger, there was no glamour or mystique about the place-it was a has-been borough of old whites and young blacks, of brownstones gone to seed, and of women sitting in rooms with the shades down, watching television in the middle of the afternoon.

Bill stopped the car in front of a corner brick house on DeKalb Avenue where his uncle and aunt Di Pasquale lived, and he walked up the path to knock on a double-locked door. His aunt Marion, after peeking from behind a curtain, let him into the living room, where his uncle, a slim and distinguished-looking man of about seventy, sat in a soft chair watching television. The uncle stood, quickly put on his jacket, and left with Bill, pleased to be getting out of the house on this sunny afternoon; he was grateful to his nephew for having called and suggested a ride out to Long Island.

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 pa.s.s 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, das.h.i.+ng 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, cl.u.s.tered 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 partners.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed, 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 rea.s.suring 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 sc.r.a.p 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. ”n.o.body'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 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 pa.s.sengers paying no attention, and so Bill made a U-turn and proceeded on toward East Meadow. 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 pa.s.sengers 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 gra.s.s, 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 owners.h.i.+p. 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 gla.s.s with more wine, he tried to switch the subject. He commented on his aunt's cut-gla.s.s wine goblets, saying that they were nicely designed and that his mother in Arizona had a set of gla.s.ses similar to these.

His aunt said that she was aware of that, recalling that they had bought the wine gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.ses 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-cla.s.s compartment; while he might be able to save between $30 and $40 by traveling tourist-cla.s.s, 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 a.s.sured himself that he was not ordinary, and he would not even allow himself to appear 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 mult.i.tudes 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. 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 mult.i.tudes 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.

Entering the 707 jet, he removed his jacket and handed it to a stewardess; then he sat back in a soft seat in the front row where there was maximum leg room and loosened his tie. After buckling his seat belt, he looked at his watch-it was exactly noon; 9:00 A.M. in California, and Rosalie and the children were up and about, and he was sure that Chuckie's rabbits were still running wild in the yard. Bill was looking forward to getting home, cognizant of the fact that ”home” now was a place that he did not know well, San Jose; and he also reminded himself that during his thirty-seven years he had never been in one house for very long. As a child he had moved from place to place like an ”army brat”-an infancy in Brooklyn, an early boyhood in Hempstead, then at the age of ten to Tucson where he lived alone in motels, later in the winter homes that his father had rented or bought there at various times, homes that were abandoned during the summers as Bill returned with his family to New York. Perhaps the only home with which he had identified personally was the one in Flagstaff that he and Rosalie had moved into on returning from their honeymoon in 1956. That was the one year in his adult life when he had tried to blend in with what he regarded as conventional society, joining Kiwanis, investing in a small radio station, a.s.sociating with people who worked nine-to-five. During that period he had gone weeks, sometimes months, without being reminded of his father's activities or his own dark secret. But then the scandal of Apalachin the following year abruptly terminated his masquerading in middle-cla.s.s America; and since that year, with all his traveling and s.h.i.+fting from one address to another, he began to identify his ”home” not in the strict terms of a particular house but rather with the airport in the town in which he was residing. After leaving Flagstaff he was ”home” every time his plane landed at the airport in Tucson or Phoenix; or, after 1963, at La Guardia or Kennedy; and now it was the terminal in San Francisco or San Jose.

But at this moment he was obviously going nowhere; his plane was immobile on the runway at JFK, and the stewardess had just announced that there would be a delay due to the excessive air traffic. Bill looked out the window and counted at least a dozen planes lined up ahead of the one he was in, flight 41, and he knew that it might be another hour before takeoff. He thought again of his aunt Marion's remark at the dinner table last night, and he was still bothered by it. Oh, you used to be such fun when you came to town. What happened? Oh, you used to be such fun when you came to town. What happened? He knew the time she was referring to-it was before East Meadow, a period in the late fifties and early sixties when the Bonanno organization was thriving, when he had more cash that he knew what to do with, and more problems than he recognized. He would fly into New York from Phoenix every few weeks on one pretense or another, and would take his aunt and other relatives to the Copacabana, to Broadway shows, to expensive restaurants. He recalled one night when his bill at the Copacabana was approximately $900, which he casually paid out of a thick wad in his pocket, loving the feeling at that moment. It was not a sense of opulence, power, egotism, or a satisfaction in having so much cash; it was almost a contempt of money that he had felt, a wanton disregard for the thing that others craved, an easy-come-easy-go att.i.tude that mocked the miser in mankind and demonstrated a recklessness about life and a fearlessness about the future-all this and more had contributed to the private joy that Bill felt on that night when he had placed nine hundred-dollar bills and a hundred-dollar tip on a silver tray at the Copacabana, not caring that the lights were dim and that n.o.body was watching except the waiter. Fun. His father had undoubtedly felt the same thing a thousand times during his lush years, and Bill remembered hearing of an occasion when, after another man had beaten his father to a check in a restaurant, a rare instance, his father nonchalantly took the hundred-dollar bill that he held, ripped it up, and left it in an ashtray. He knew the time she was referring to-it was before East Meadow, a period in the late fifties and early sixties when the Bonanno organization was thriving, when he had more cash that he knew what to do with, and more problems than he recognized. He would fly into New York from Phoenix every few weeks on one pretense or another, and would take his aunt and other relatives to the Copacabana, to Broadway shows, to expensive restaurants. He recalled one night when his bill at the Copacabana was approximately $900, which he casually paid out of a thick wad in his pocket, loving the feeling at that moment. It was not a sense of opulence, power, egotism, or a satisfaction in having so much cash; it was almost a contempt of money that he had felt, a wanton disregard for the thing that others craved, an easy-come-easy-go att.i.tude that mocked the miser in mankind and demonstrated a recklessness about life and a fearlessness about the future-all this and more had contributed to the private joy that Bill felt on that night when he had placed nine hundred-dollar bills and a hundred-dollar tip on a silver tray at the Copacabana, not caring that the lights were dim and that n.o.body was watching except the waiter. Fun. His father had undoubtedly felt the same thing a thousand times during his lush years, and Bill remembered hearing of an occasion when, after another man had beaten his father to a check in a restaurant, a rare instance, his father nonchalantly took the hundred-dollar bill that he held, ripped it up, and left it in an ashtray.

What piqued Bill about his aunt's remark was the inference that without his pockets full of money he had lost something of his character, his humor, his impulsiveness, or whatever it had been that had made him different from the ordinary people that were most of his relatives and friends. He thought that his aunt was wrong-he had not lost his humor, and the fact that he was officially bankrupt did not bother him. It merely required that he be extremely careful in how he spent whatever income he still received from private sources; it meant that he had to borrow money for his air fare, being always prepared to identify the relatives or friends who lent it to him; and it meant that he could leave no trace of his other expenses, could not even patronize the same gas station too often lest the attendant become a witness to the amount that Bill spent on his car. Without a sense of humor Bill knew that he could never have slept peacefully at night with the absurd knowledge that at the end of every day the government added $168 in interest and penalties to the nearly $100,000 it claimed he owed in various tax suits in Arizona and New York.