Part 16 (1/2)
”And he was put on the shelf.”
”Temporarily,” Zicarelli corrected.
”All right,” De Cavalcante said, ”so how about Joe? Joe knows better than this. This guy [Di Gregorio] is only a capo capo. Joe is supposed to be chief justice-one of the chief justices.”
”Fine,” Zicarelli said.
”Wait a minute,” De Cavalcante cut in, ”now he puts this guy on the shelf, so why shouldn't the commission put Joe Bonanno on the shelf!” Although De Cavalcante conceded that he had finally reached the elder Bonanno and had arranged to deliver the commission's message in person, De Cavalcante added that Bonanno, getting very technical, wanted three three commission members to deliver the message. commission members to deliver the message.
”Why don't you use three people for it?” Zicarelli asked. ”To make it really really right? right?
”What's the difference?” De Cavalcante said. ”I'm a responsible person...” Anyway, De Cavalcante went on, as the commission was about to officially demote Bonanno, he, De Cavalcante, interceded and said, ” 'Wait a minute, boys. Give me an opportunity. I want to see this man on my own. I'll take full responsibility.' That's when you took me over to New York, right?” he asked Zicarelli. ”At that time I talked to him. For an hour and a half he kept telling me what a nice guy he was! 'Well, why don't you do the right thing for your family? These people are not looking to harm anybody. They're all embarra.s.sed. You're putting them to a point where you're aggravating the whole situation.' People will start to wonder what the h.e.l.l has this guy done? You understand what I mean?”
”Yeah,” Zicarelli said, conceding, ”maybe there's something here that you and I don't know about.”
”I know a little more,” De Cavalcante said. ”There's a lot of questions they want to ask. Some of them are pretty serious-but the guy can either say yes or no, that's all. But now they figure there's something in this that's not kosher. So they wanted me to go back and tell him to tell these caporegimas caporegimas in his administration that 'We recognize you but not him. Don't let this man lead you to where you're all involved. This man has made a mistake.' Its a bad situation,” De Cavalcante said, ”and I've stuck my neck out all the way.” in his administration that 'We recognize you but not him. Don't let this man lead you to where you're all involved. This man has made a mistake.' Its a bad situation,” De Cavalcante said, ”and I've stuck my neck out all the way.”
”This is a rough one,” Zicarelli said.
”You know this could smash up the whole country again,” De Cavalcante said.
Zicarelli, while not disputing him, still did not understand what, if anything, Joseph Bonanno had done that was a violation of the brotherhood's rules. And it could also be that Bonanno had been a good boss and that the members.h.i.+p wished to stay behind him.
”I want to tell you something,” De Cavalcante said. ”You're a soldier.”
”That's all I am!”
”You see,” De Cavalcante said, ”these people [Bonanno's officers], none of them want to open their mouth about him. There isn't one man in that group that'll challenge him [except Di Gregorio].” But, De Cavalcante said, he hoped disaster could be avoided, pointing out to Zicarelli: ”...there's n.o.body that wants peace and harmony more than me, you know that.”
”I'm with you.”
”I'm telling you because tomorrow I don't want to see you get involved in anything. I want you to know that the commission has nothing against any of you people.”
”Sam, maybe I don't understand...”
”Cause this is strictly off the record,” De Cavalcante continued. ”It's between you and I, but tomorrow I don't want you to say, 'Jesus Christ, I hold this guy as a friend and he don't let me know!' ”
”I understand that, Sam,” Zicarelli said. ”But,” he added, ”you're only as good as the team you're on. You're with the team-win, lose, or draw! How can I go the other way?”
”Wait a minute,” De Cavalcante said, ”I'm not asking...”
”I know that! You say to me that in the event something happens I don't want to see you involved. How do I duck? What kind of jerk would I be to duck?”
”Well, you see,” De Cavalcante said, ”as long as n.o.body gets hurt...”
”See what I mean?” Zicarelli said. ”Maybe I don't understand you!”
Undiscouraged, Sam De Cavalcante persisted with his view that Joseph Bonanno was unreasonable. ”This guy don't want to listen to reason,” De Cavalcante said, ”he don't want to be kind. He's causing so much friction amongst everybody! They been looking for this man for over a year!”
”Over a year?”
”Yeah!” De Cavalcante cried. ”He said he never got the message. Now they're gonna prove to him that messages were sent and that he received them.”
”Well,” Zicarelli said, ”the man should be at least ent.i.tled to the chance to clear himself.”
”Well, does he expect the commission to come to him, right or wrong? His own uncle, who is the most respected of the commission, has pleaded with him to come up and see him.”
”Who's his uncle?” Joseph Zicarelli asked.
”Stefano Magaddino.”
”He's Joe's uncle?”
”Yeah,” De Cavalcante said, ”there's a relations.h.i.+p. I think it's uncle. And they treated him like dirt! This guy was crying to me-the old guy [Magaddino]. He said, 'Sam, now you tell me this guy's a nice guy. I sent for him. He didn't know if I needed him to save my neck.' Understand what I mean? Joe, if I call you up in an emergency, and you don't show up-you don't know why I'm calling. There might be two guys out there looking to kill me, right? And your presence could save me.”
”Yeah, right,” Zicarelli said.
”You can't take it upon yourself to ignore these things,” De Cavalcante said. ”Joe, if you called me, no matter what time, I'm gonna be down there. And if you're gonna go down, we'll go down together, right?”
”That's right,” Zicarelli agreed. ”But in the same sense-if your boss is your friend and you have committed yourself to him, right or wrong, where are you going?”
”That's why the commission feels bad,” De Cavalcante said. ”Because they know that he lied to them. The commission wants your people to know the truth. Then decide if you still want him.”
Zicarelli said that the commission should convey this to the officers in the Bonanno family, which De Cavalcante acknowledged was the right thing to do except that the officers were still under Bonanno's control.
”That proves they still recognize him as the boss,” Zicarelli deduced.
”I understand that!” De Cavalcante said. ”Hey, I'm not saying they didn't do the right thing. The commission also knows that it's under Joe Bonanno's orders...But the commission supersedes any boss.”
”He ought to know that,” Zicarelli finally conceded.
”Better than anybody,” said Sam De Cavalcante.
On October 16, 1964-five days before Joseph Bonanno disappeared on Park Avenue-Sam De Cavalcante was again in his office discussing developments with his own man, Majuri. De Cavalcante was upset about a meeting he said he had in Brooklyn with Joseph Colombo, who had somehow failed to impress him, and De Cavalcante wondered aloud at how Colombo could have been elevated to a place on the commission.
”What experience has he [Colombo] got?” De Cavalcante asked. ”He was a bust-out guy all his life.”