Honor Thy Father Part 4

In the grand jury room on the fourteenth floor, which was barred to the press, it was quickly apparent to the younger Bonanno that the government had invested considerable time and money in its investigation of him, and he could not help but be impressed by the depth of its research. It was not the government's probing into his illegal activities that surprised him or its evidence that revealed he was part of his father's organization or its knowledge of his hideaway in Queens (the exact location was not yet known); it was rather the government's close scrutiny of his private life that impressed him; irritated him. From the questions he was asked he could deduce that the government was aware of his extramarital affair, his illegitimate child, his problems with Rosalie; it knew about his own problems as a young man and college student, his business ventures in Flagstaff and Phoenix, his pilot training in Tucson, which had led some government attorneys to suspect that he had been flying his father back and forth between various secret places in recent months.

While he issued a denial, he was intrigued by the possibilities of such methods of escape and reminded himself that he should keep up with his flying. In nearly all of his testimony, he was as candid as he could be, admitting for example that he was acquainted with Sam Giancana, having met him at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, and that he knew Stefano Magaddino, describing him as a "distant cousin." He would not state if he had ever met Carlo Gambino or Thomas Lucchese and said he had never met Vito Genovese. He said that his business interests in New York were in real estate investing, and in his pocket he carried business cards listing himself as an executive vice-president of the Republic Financial Corporation of 140 Cedar Street. Regarding his personal life, he admitted being the father of his mistress' child, adding that he felt a moral and financial responsibility to them both but that Rosalie and his four children came first. He had no idea where his father was, he said, or if his father was indeed alive; beyond that, he would not comment on his father's disappearance, including the fact that it was he who had telephoned Maloney on December 18 with word that his father was alive.

It was Bill Bonanno's contention that the conversation with Maloney was privileged information protected by the rights of a client-attorney relationship-he felt that Maloney at the time of the call was not merely the elder Bonanno's lawyer but also the legal representative for Bill and his sister, Catherine, who had also been summoned to testify before the grand jury. In her instance, Maloney's role was not contested; he in fact submitted reports from West Coast physicians that Catherine's small children were suffering from tonsilitis, that she herself was undergoing treatment for an intestinal ailment and sinusitis, and therefore could not serve as a witness. (The judge countered by appointing another physician in California to examine Catherine and verify her incapability of appearing in New York.) But the legal argument over Bill's relationship with Maloney went on for days, during which several other developments were reported to be occurring on the outside.

There was the announcement in Rome by the news agency Italia that Joseph Bonanno was believed to be hiding out in Sicily; attributing its information to unidentified sources within the police department, the agency stated that FBI agents were now searching the island and it suggested that the elder Bonanno had sailed from the United States on a Panamanian merchant ship under an a.s.sumed name and went ash.o.r.e on a fishing boat.

There were also news reports about an underworld meeting in a Long Island restaurant that had been held to discuss the Bonanno situation; among those present were Sam Giancana of Chicago, Thomas Eboli, reputed leader of the Vito Genovese organization during Genovese's imprisonment, and Carmine Tramunti, an officer in the Lucchese organization. The restaurant in Cedarhurst was closed to regular patrons on the night of the meeting, and as a result the proprietor was subpoenaed along with the others to testify before the grand jury.

Although nothing of great significance seemed to emerge from their testimony, the exposure of that gathering and similar ones in 1965 kept organized crime in the headlines and focused constant attention on such men as Sam Giancana, who had once been able to travel freely between fashionable gambling casinos and night spots in the United States and overseas without interruptions and questioning from agents. But as the media accelerated its coverage of the Mafia, a trend concurrent with the intensified anti-Mafia campaign begun initially at the Justice Department under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and gradually endorsed by J. Edgar Hoover, there was no longer much privacy for Giancana and other reputed dons; almost everything they did was observed and made available to the press, and the publicity not only affected them but anyone with whom they were seen in public. Giancana's travels with singer Phyllis McGuire were widely reported, as was his acquaintance with Frank Sinatra. Giancana'a relationship with Sinatra, specifically his presence at Sinatra's Cal-Neva lodge at Lake Tahoe and his inclusion elsewhere in Sinatra's entourage, caused a dispute between Sinatra and the Nevada gambling authorities and was believed to have been instrumental in Sinatra's decision to sell his interst in the Cal-Neva lodge and in The Sands motel in Las Vegas. But the pursuit of the slim, dapper Giancana continued, haunting him even on the golf course as agents trailed him from tee to green, causing him finally to file charges against the agents in a Chicago court. The judge ordered the agents to stay at least one foursome behind Giancana, but a United States appeals court later overruled the judge's surveillance restrictions.

The Supreme Court meanwhile had rejected an appeal by the family of the late Al Capone on their invasion of privacy complaint against the CBS television series "The Untouchables," which dramatized Capone's activities during the heyday of Chicago gangsterism. However, Capone's fourty-eight-year-old son, Albert Francis Capone, Jr., of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, did suceed in having his name legally changed to Albert Francis, claiming that his father's reputation "pushes me into the glare of publicity for even minor violations of the law."

Bill's brother also changed his name, though never legally or consistently, when he was concerned about getting part-time work on television Westerns or in rodeos or was trying to arrange bookings for the teen-age musical groups he sometimes managed. Nevertheless he, too, was subpoenaed in January 1965 by the grand jury to testify about his father's disappearance, and his photograph was printed in The New York Times The New York Times and other publications. Joseph Bonanno, Jr., remained in New York for one day, during which he had no comment to make to the jury or the press, and he did not smile as the camera lights flashed into his face while he stood waiting outside the courtroom door. After he was released from further questioning, he returned quietly to Phoenix College. and other publications. Joseph Bonanno, Jr., remained in New York for one day, during which he had no comment to make to the jury or the press, and he did not smile as the camera lights flashed into his face while he stood waiting outside the courtroom door. After he was released from further questioning, he returned quietly to Phoenix College.

Bill Bonanno appeared twenty-one times before the grand jury during January and February, contending throughout that what he had said on the telephone to Maloney was privileged information that should be legally withheld from the jury. But the government attorneys disagreed, and the a.s.sistant United States Attorney, Gerald Walpin, insisted that "the unanswered questions are of vital importance in our efforts to learn what happened to and the whereabouts of Joseph Bonanno."

Bill remained adamant. He had already made one big mistake in calling Maloney, disregarding the warning don't make waves, don't do anything don't make waves, don't do anything, and he feared that his father's life might be in greater jeopardy if he again ignored the advice and discussed the substance of the call he had received at the phone booth and the call he had made to Maloney afterward. So he persisted in his silence as the government interrogators became increasingly irritated, and finally the question of what to do next was placed before Judge Charles H. Tenney.

On March 1 the judge announced his ruling-a client-attorney relationship had not existed between Maloney and the younger Bonanno at the time of the call in December, and the judge therefore ordered Bonanno to reveal the substance of the conversation. Bonanno, facing the judge, replied, "With all due deference and respect to the court, I decline to answer on the grounds of attorney-client relationship." Judge Tenney, suddenly impatient, cited Bonanno for contempt of court. He sentenced him to jail immediately, for an indefinite term, and denied bail pending appeal.

Bill Bonanno displayed no sign of emotion as he was led by court authorities out of the room to the elevator, then down to the bas.e.m.e.nt where, in a large dimly-lit room, several handcuffed prisoners sat waiting to be driven across town to jail. Bill was searched and relieved of his wrist.w.a.tch, ring, pocket hankerchief and other personal possessions by a guard who noted the contents on a doc.u.ment that Bill signed. Then he was handcuffed to a large black man with facial scars and a vague expression about the eyes. The black man did not speak, did not even look at Bill as their wrists were linked.

Soon they were lined up with the other prisoners and marched through a corridor up a ramp into a faded green bus. The crosstown ride over the narrow cobblestone streets of downtown Manhattan was slow and b.u.mpy. Bill looked out the window at the crowds of people going home from work, jamming themselves into subway kiosks, waving at cabs. The other prisoners paid no attention to the street; they sat looking at the floor or straight ahead and Bill guessed that they had taken this ride before.

Many of the prisoners were black, a few were Puerto Rican, a few were white and had hard aging faces and hollow eyes common on the Bowery, except these men did not have the shakes and their hands were strong and steady, hands of a safecracker. Most of the men were probably small-time thieves and dope pushers, pimps and numbers runners, rapists and maybe even killers, but Bill did not sense any great strength of character about them; they were doubtless part of the anonymous ma.s.s of criminals who dominate the national statistics but never make a name. Bill was the only one in the bus who was well dressed; the rest wore shirts without ties, tattered coats or leather jackets over rumpled trousers and scuffed shoes, and they sat slumped in the bus looking tired and hopeless, a team of losers after the game.

The bus turned into West Street near the waterfront along the Hudson River, a neighborhood of warehouses, loading ramps, and trailer trucks parked for the night under the elevated roadway still busy with commuter traffic. The bus stopped in front of one st.u.r.dy-looking stone building that looked like a warehouse but was in fact the jail, although it was too dark for Bill to see the building clearly from the outside. He heard a guard yelling in the front of the bus, heard the clicking sound of handcuffs as the prisoners filed out in twos, then walked with his companion past large steel doors that clanged quickly behind them after they entered the Federal House of Detention.

They pa.s.sed through small rooms with barred windows; then, in a large room, they were halted, uncuffed, lined against the wall. They waited in line for at least an hour as guards and an orderly inspected each newly arrived prisoner, forcing each prisoner to remove his clothes and stand naked for inspection. While certain guards examined the shoes, particularly the heels where hollow portions might contain drugs, other guards probed between the prisoners' toes, teeth, into the ears, a.n.u.s, under the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. The shoes were returned to the prisoners, although the clothing was confiscated for the term of confinement; cotton robes were issued, and the men, wearing their shoes without socks, were led into the record room. There they were interrogated by desk clerks who collected personal data for the files, then they were fingerprinted and given medical examinations, finally they were led past stock clerks who issued each prisoner a pillowcase and a single sheet for a cell bunk.

Bill noticed that several uniformed prisoners were a.s.sisting the jail staff in processing the incoming men-the clerk typists were prisoners, the medical orderlies were prisoners, so were the men in the stock room. These prisoners were more lively and alert than the group Bill had come with, and he also a.s.sumed that the holders of these positions held a certain power over the other inmates. But what impressed him most at this point was the deferential manner in which these men were treating him. They had been noticeably attentive as he moved through the lines, a few had smiled at him, and one prisoner-confined to a cell near the corridor-had called out his name, saying, "Hi, Bill, we heard you were coming." The man looked vaguely familiar. He was a white man in his fifties who seemed healthy and relaxed, possessing an air of innocence.

Bill returned the greeting and moved on, following in line up to the second floor, to the captain's office, where cell a.s.signments were announced. Bill was given a cell in the maximum-security section. He was escorted to it by a guard who was formal but not abrupt and who, after Bill had entered the cell, closed the steel door gently. The cell was more heavily fortified with steel than the others he had seen, and it was located in an isolated corner near a staircase. It was small, damp, and depressing, with a bunk in one corner and a toilet and tiny sink in the other. The cell next to it was unoccupied. The place was intensely quiet.

He stood for a few moments, but his feet without socks felt clammy in his shoes. He sat on the edge of the bunk. It was cold and he thought of covering himself with the bunk blanket but decided for no particular reason that he had better wait. It was probably 8:00 P.M. He had not eaten since lunch and was hungry. Now he heard voices echoing in distant corridors along with the clanging metallic sounds of heavy doors opening and closing. He sat for what seemed like an hour thinking about where he was, almost doubting it, and wondering how Rosalie had taken the news that he was in jail. When he left the house in East Meadow in the morning, it was a.s.sumed that he would return by evening, a routine he had followed since he had begun appearing in court two months ago. Neither he nor Krieger had ever antic.i.p.ated that he would be sent to jail without being able to post bond and to remain free pending appeal. Bill knew now that he could remain in prison until the expiration date of the grand jury in April 1966, more than a year away, unless he agreed to answer the questions about the phone calls. Although Krieger planned to file papers immediately with the United States Circuit Court of Appeals asking that bail be set, Bill was not optimistic. He felt that the government intended to press him hard now, and he expected no favors from the court.

After hearing the sound of approaching footsteps, Bill saw a guard peeking into his cell holding up a few magazines, newspapers, and a chocolate candy bar.

"Bill," he said, "Harold would like you to have these."

Bill did not reply. Harold? He was confused but did not want to show it. He also did not want to indicate that he knew who Harold was.

"Harold," the guard went on, "you know-the one you saw when you came in."

Bill recalled seeing one effeminate creature among the medical orderlies who had smiled at him, and he remembered the other uniformed prisoners, too, including the gregarious one in the corner cell who had seemed familiar. Then he suddenly remembered that this man was was named Harold-Harold (Kayo) Konigsberg, the so-called king of the loan sharks. Bill had met him briefly a few years ago in New Jersey, and he also remembered reading in newspapers about Konigsberg as a privileged inmate in a Jersey prison in which guards were accused of allowing women into the cells for brief s.e.xual interludes. Bill was amused and impressed that Konigsberg apparently still knew how to make the best of things behind bars, but he did not reveal any sign of recognition to the guard. He thanked him and accepted the magazines, newspapers, and candy, and he was relieved when the guard walked away. named Harold-Harold (Kayo) Konigsberg, the so-called king of the loan sharks. Bill had met him briefly a few years ago in New Jersey, and he also remembered reading in newspapers about Konigsberg as a privileged inmate in a Jersey prison in which guards were accused of allowing women into the cells for brief s.e.xual interludes. Bill was amused and impressed that Konigsberg apparently still knew how to make the best of things behind bars, but he did not reveal any sign of recognition to the guard. He thanked him and accepted the magazines, newspapers, and candy, and he was relieved when the guard walked away.

Bill was now extremely suspicious of the special treatment he was receiving, and he certainly had no intention of eating the candy, although he craved it. If his father's enemies wished to dispose of him in jail there was no easier method than poison. For all he knew, Konigsberg and the others who had been friendly, including the guards, might be involved in a contract with the commission. He remembered reading once how Gaspare Pisciotta, the alleged betrayor and a.s.sa.s.sin of Giuliano, died of poison in a Palermo jail in spite of the extraordinary precautions Pisciotta had taken. Pisciotta's mother was permitted to bring him food, Pisciotta was allowed to make his own coffee in jail, and he also fed bits of everything to his pet sparrow before consuming it himself. Then one day Pisciotta complained to a prison doctor of chest trouble; vitamin concentrate was prescribed, and Pisciotta added a teaspoon of it to his coffee. Two minutes later he was on the ground writhing in pain, and within a half hour Pisciotta was dead.

Bill put the candy aside and sat reading the newspapers. There was no mention of him in these editions, the grand jury ceasing to be news at this point, although he was sure there would be a story in tomorrow's editions about his imprisonment. Perhaps word of his refusal to talk would make points with his father's captors, would perhaps contribute to his father's well-being. Bill was anxious to see what effect, if any, his going to jail would have on the outside. If nothing positive resulted after a month or two, if he saw no reason for remaining behind bars and thought he could be more useful back in circulation, despite having to spend most of each weekday in court, he could inform the warden that he wanted to resume testifying before the grand jury. Judge Tenney had guaranteed his immediate release under these conditions.

In court Bill could tell the jury all about the phone calls, explaining the coinbox system his father had devised, relating the call from the stranger, the substance of his own call to Maloney-things he now considered too risky to discuss. If his father was still missing months from now he might decide that he had nothing to lose by talking. The whole telephone episode, after all, revealed nothing about his father's whereabouts or the men who took him there. The government thought the calls were significant, but Bill knew they were not-in any case his decision about discussing them was something he could consider in the months ahead. Meanwhile he would remain in jail. He thought that jail was perhaps not such a bad place for him at this time. It offered him the luxury of not hiding, not running; he could relax for a while and think about his future. The only thing he had to worry about in jail was staying alive.

Bill Bonanno heard hissing sounds through the bars and looked up. He saw a skinny, nervous dark-eyed prisoner motioning toward him.

"You got any clothes?" the man asked in a whisper.

Bill shook his head, saying he had only the robe that he wore.

"Let me see what I can do," the prisoner said, adding that his name was Joe and that he was a friend of one of the Bonanno organization's bookmakers on the Lower East Side. Joe then disappeared quietly up the steps to the third floor.

Within a half hour, Joe returned carrying a freshly laundered T-shirt and pair of shorts, a blue denim shirt and trousers, and a pair of woolen socks. After Bill thanked him, Joe again disappeared upstairs.

Although the trousers and shirt were small, Bill managed to squeeze into them. His was curious not only about Joe but about the whole way of life in prison. There was obviously a small society and specal pecking order within this thick-walled world and he wanted to learn more about it, but he had to be careful, he reminded himself. He began to feel warmer and more comfortable in the clothes. Later he wrapped himself in the blanket and went easily to sleep.

A guard banging on the bars woke him up early the next morning. While other prisoners were escorted to a mess hall, he was confined to his cell where a breakfast tray was soon shoved through a slot in the door. It consisted of oatmeal, toast, and coffee. After he finished, he stood waiting, thinking that soon he would be led out for a shower and shave. He waited for a few hours but no one came. He had noticed that his toilet did not flush, the sink did not work, and he planned to mention this to the guard, but then he decided he had better wait until he understood more about the place before making complaints.

Most of the afternoon pa.s.sed before a guard appeared. Under his arm the guard carried a folded sheet of paper, and, peeking into the cell, he said to Bill, almost confidentially, "Look, this is not a very good cell. I don't think you're too comfortable here. Why don't you fill out this sheet-its called a 'cop-out sheet'-and tell the warden you'd like something better..."

Bill looked at the guard, astonished. But the guard seemed sincere. Bill took the sheet, thanked him, and returned to his bunk, not even reading the paper. If he signed it he was sure it would somehow be used as evidence against him, would mark him as a chronic complainer on his first full day in jail, might even justify some special punishment they had in store for him. If he got out of this cell, he might be given something worse, if that were possible, might be placed in some special room designed to break him down or otherwise subject him to incriminating temptations. His imagination raced with dire possibilities. He waited until the guard had turned away and was gone, then he placed the "cop-out sheet" on a ledge next to the newspapers and the unopened candy bar.

The dinner tray that night contained food barely edible, although he admitted to himself that nothing would seem palatable while he was in his current state of mind. Later Joe reappeared outside the cell holding three hard-boiled eggs in a paper napkin. He handed them quickly to Bill, explaining that they had been smuggled from the commissary, then he was gone. Bill was sorry he had taken the eggs. If he ate them, he might die; if he did not, he might get caught with them by a guard and be charged with smuggling, or at least have to explain where he got them. Quickly he crushed the eggs into tiny pieces which he deposited into the toilet. He waited, but the guard did not come. He suspected that Joe might be a prison spy, having heard that such men are commonly found in jails, lessening their own term as they reported on fellow inmates. Bill also thought it possible that his cell was bugged, that some hidden camera might be focused on him, but he was almost accustomed to that feeling, and it did not bother him.

On the following day the guard returned with another "cop-out sheet." Again Bill took it but did not sign it, and the same thing happened on the third day. There was no exchange of words or emotions between them, it was all impersonal, automatic-the guard shoved the form through the bars, Bill took it, said thank you, then placed it on the ledge with the other unsigned forms. But he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable now without having had a shower or a shave since his arrival, and he could not escape the odor of his own excrement and the smell of the eggs.

During the next morning, his fourth day in the cell, he was escorted to an outside bathroom and told to shave-his lawyer, Krieger, was waiting to speak to him in the warden's outer office. Krieger had come to say that the legal papers were filed with the court of appeals but that the process would be slow. Krieger noticed that Bill seemed rumpled, unkempt, and he was shocked to hear that Bill had not been permitted to shower in four days and that the toilet was not functioning. Krieger wanted to report this immediately to Judge Tenney, but Bill begged him not to, saying it would only cause more trouble for him in jail. If Krieger insisted on doing something, Bill suggested that he might drop a hint to the warden but that under no circ.u.mstances was Krieger to convey the impression that Bill was complaining.

Three days later a guard came for Bill, led him out of the maximum-security cell and escorted him through a long corridor into a large cell in which there were a dozen or more bunks on each side and a number of prisoners standing around and talking. The place was brighter and obviously less restrictive; in the parlance of prison life, Bill Bonanno was now "in population." Harold Konigsberg and Joe were not there but he recognized a few faces from the first day, and after the guard had gone the men introduced themselves and a few seemed very intelligent. At dinner time Bill accompanied them in line to the mess hall, sitting at one of the long tables and noticing that there were spoons and forks on the tables, but no knives. He also noticed that the salt and pepper was sprinkled on tiny pieces of paper in front of each plate; one prisoner explained to Bill that there had once been salt and pepper shakers but that all had been stolen.

When the prisoners were not eating or sleeping, they were kept busy at various tasks; and as Bill had suspected, the prison was in many ways run by the inmates. The chefs were prisoners, as were the bankers, plumbers, launderers, carpenters. The blue denim uniforms worn by the men-Bill had finally received clothes that fit him properly-were made by female prisoners in a women's penitentiary. The library was staffed by prisoners, whose taste was dominated by escape literature-science fiction, mysteries, but s.e.x novels were prohibited. Prisoners also were in charge of the movie projector-on evenings when films were allowed. Bill was often bored by the films that could be shown-light comedy, Doris Day, La.s.sie, Tarzan; no gangster films, no violent Westerns, nothing s.e.xually suggestive. The magazines included The Reader's Digest The Reader's Digest, trade publications dealing with automobiles and sports, comic books but not Playboy Playboy. It was apparently prison policy to try to curb masturbation by denying access to photographs of naked women, but Bill noticed that several advertis.e.m.e.nts evidently featuring young women had been torn out of the available magazines, possibly by guards, most likely by inmates. h.o.m.os.e.xuals were obvious around the prison, but they tended to keep to themselves, being available if desired outside their circle although fearing the brutality that often accompanied the risk.

Bill's first job, that of a painter in a crew a.s.signed to wainscot the walls of several rooms and corridors, permitted him to move widely through the maze of prison life and to observe and overhear much of what was said and done. Although the guards were always nearby-sitting in the visitors' room, standing with carbines on the rooftop enclosure when prisoners were permitted outdoors-Bill realized that the prisoners were nonetheless able, through skill and imagination, through begging, borrowing, stealing, and bartering, to achieve a degree of independence and to obtain certain commodities that were officially forbidden. For example, while it was against regulations to drink coffee in the cells or to drink whiskey anywhere in prison, certain inmates managed to do both by fashioning their own heating apparatus for instant coffee and by making their own whiskey from ingredients they smuggled in from the kitchen.

The coffee-making process was relatively simple: they cut off a piece of cord from the electric floor polisher that was kept in the hall closet, and, after attaching wire from the cord to the metal handles of two broken spoons and lowering the spoons into a cup of water, the men inserted the plug into an outlet in the cell to heat the water. Then they added the stolen coffee, sugar, and milk.

The whiskey making, however, required more planning and patience. The prisoners began by stealing ajar or vase and putting into it pieces of apple, cuc.u.mber, potato, and also raisins that they had picked out of the raisin bread at breakfast. They added yeast, which they obtained from the prison baker in exchange for packs of cigarettes. (From the size of the bread on the breakfast table each morning, Bill could tell whether or not the yeast content was low; if it was, he a.s.sumed that somewhere in the prison whiskey was being processed.) The yeast and the other ingredients were kept in a jar half-filled with water for nearly a week, hidden behind brooms and mops in closets that had air vents that permitted the smell of fermentation to escape. When the brewing process was considered complete, a prisoner would pour the liquid in the jar through a towel into another jar, and the men would drink it. Bill had tried it only once, and his stomach burned for days.

The drink was consumed mostly by black and indigent white prisoners, not inmates who had money or influence on the outside. These men could often bribe the guards into smuggling in name-brand whiskey in the tiny bottles served on airplanes. Equality among men, Bill quickly learned, was as varied in jail as it was outside; money signified power on either side of the wall-prisoners with money could have favors done for guards on the outside in return for privileges within; and these prisoners could also have money deposited with the commissary each month in the name of indigent prisoners who would kick back part of the amount in items purchased, such as cigarettes, or would repay the debt by relieving their benefactors of prison ch.o.r.es, such as cleaning the cell or stealing extra clothing from the stockroom. While the amount of money was small-no prisoner was allowed to exceed fifteen dollars a month credit in the commissary-there were several prisoners whose family or friends on the outside could not afford to send even fifteen dollars, and it was these prisoners who became the servants of the more affluent.

There were social levels within a society of imprisoned men, and while Bill Bonanno tried to avoid becoming part of any clique, he tended to a.s.sociate more with the affluent white-collar criminals-the stock swindlers, the crooked lawyers, the business executives who had misappropriated company funds. These men were more articulate and interesting than the others, and during leisure time in the evenings Bill learned many thing, including how to play chess. But he also sensed about them a quality of deceit and hypocrisy that went beyond any he had felt in his father's world-these men knew crime on its most genteel level, perpetrating their corporate vices on carpeted floors in paneled offices, and even their presence in jail did not seem to tarnish their veneer of respectability. They suggested what they were underneath, however, by their interest in him, their expressed desire to see him when they all were again free. They said they had propositions that might interest him, and he could imagine what these propositions were, consisting no doubt of intimidating one of their business compet.i.tors or subtly threatening a stubborn labor leader or hara.s.sing a landlord who refused to sell out to a big land developer or avenging a personal insult or a social snub or beating up a wife's lover.

The newspapers usually described these men as "respectable" executives who had been corrupted by mobsters, but Bill thought that just as often it was the executives who lured others into doing the dirty work. In any case, Bill Bonanno was not interested in any of their propositions. He enjoyed their company while in confinement, was curious about how their minds worked, but once he was released from jail he did not care if he saw any of them again.

Rosalie visited the prison every week, bringing a different son each time. The boys were growing up and already having problems of their own. The eldest, Charles, was doing poorly in school. The second boy, Joseph, was very compet.i.tive with Charles; he seemed extremely intelligent and alert but was frequently ill with asthmatic bronchitis and often bedridden. The youngest son, Salvatore, who reminded Bill of his own childhood photographs, was a determined boy with a hot temper and Rosalie found it difficult to control him. The only glowing reports that Bill received in jail concerned his one-year-old daughter, Felippa, who was beginning to walk and had dark hair, bangs, and whose ears were pierced to hold tiny diamond earrings.

Seeing Rosalie in the visitors' room, her reddish hair stylishly arranged, her large brown eyes very expressive, her trim figure attired in her most becoming clothes, reminded Bill of how pretty she was and made him wonder why he had strayed as he had in Arizona. Of couse it was difficult in jail for him to feel what he had felt during his final years in Tuscon and Phoenix, to remember exactly how maddening his life had been and how necessary his affair had then seemed. Now Rosalie seemed more understanding and aware of his commitments to his father, although she still was reserved and remote, having undoubtedly not forgiven him for what he had done to her. Her visits seemed more an act of duty than anything else, and yet he reminded himself that he should expect no more from her in this place-the visitors' room was strange and inhibiting, with Rosalie and Bill forced to sit facing one another between a gla.s.s wall and to speak through telephones. The boys were completely confused by the surroundings, could not understand why their father was living there. During one visit Rosalie repeated to Bill what their younger sons had replied when asked by a neighborhood child where their father was. He was living in a phone booth, they said, a very large gla.s.s booth where they talked to him through a telephone without paying a dime.

7.

ON THIS DAY, AS ON SO MANY OTHERS, ROSALIE BONANNO felt a sense of loneliness without a sense of privacy; she believed that her telephone was tapped, suspected that her home was being watched sometimes by men with binoculars, that even the sound of her footsteps was being recorded by tiny hidden gadgets and if she ventured beyond her door she might become exposed still further to strangers and to herself, for what she was and was not, by the lights of the cameramen who occasionally cruised by. felt a sense of loneliness without a sense of privacy; she believed that her telephone was tapped, suspected that her home was being watched sometimes by men with binoculars, that even the sound of her footsteps was being recorded by tiny hidden gadgets and if she ventured beyond her door she might become exposed still further to strangers and to herself, for what she was and was not, by the lights of the cameramen who occasionally cruised by.

Her past had not prepared her for the present. As a girl the reality of her family's world was kept from her; the first of three daughters, she was protected like a precious jewel, closely observed, polished, admired, displayed on special occasions. She was sent at seven to a convent school on a gentle hill in upstate New York to dwell in a state of grace and innocence, to learn about G.o.d and man from the Dominican nuns. She was awed by the beauty of the place, its atmosphere of obedience and its ident.i.ty with virtue, and she was saddened when her parents reclaimed her during her twelfth year so that her approaching womanhood could be attained under her mother's guidance.

At home in Brooklyn she continued to live a sheltered existence, attending school during the day within the walls of Visitation Academy, taught by cloistered nuns, and never going out at night except in the company of a member of her family. It was one of the ironies of her life that she had never slept alone until after she was married. At the convent upstate, there was either a nun or cla.s.smate sharing the bedroom, and when she returned to live in Brooklyn there was always one of her sisters. After her marriage to Bill, however, she experienced nocturnal solitude for the first time, and she began to dread the night as she never had as a child, and she remained awake pondering the uncertainties of her adult life-the fact that when her husband left the house in the morning she never knew what time he would return or if if he would return; the unexplained origin of her first son, Charles; the mysterious disappearance of her father-in-law. She did not know why the monthly payments on the home in East Meadow were made in the name of a stranger or why the mailman frequently left letters addressed to people she did not know or whether the various men she had seen across the street observing the house were detectives or reporters or gangsters or merely neighbors whose curiosity had been aroused by photographs of the house in the Long Island press. he would return; the unexplained origin of her first son, Charles; the mysterious disappearance of her father-in-law. She did not know why the monthly payments on the home in East Meadow were made in the name of a stranger or why the mailman frequently left letters addressed to people she did not know or whether the various men she had seen across the street observing the house were detectives or reporters or gangsters or merely neighbors whose curiosity had been aroused by photographs of the house in the Long Island press.

On the exterior, the house was not unlike the other modern ranch-type structures along Tyler Avenue, except that the shrubbery was trimmed lower and at night the lighting outside was brighter. There was a patio in the rear and a swimming pool which was boarded over because Rosalie feared that one of the younger children might fall in. The house had eight newly furnished rooms, an enormous bas.e.m.e.nt, and a two-car garage cluttered with bicycles, baby carriages, golf clubs, a lawn mower, old furniture, and cardboard cartons that Rosalie had not yet unpacked. What distinguished the home on the interior from ordinary suburban dwellings was not immediately obvious, although there were items here and there that suggested a preparedness for danger and confinement. There were rifles among the paraphernalia in the garage, and also a rifle in the guest room behind a bureau on which was a statue of the Christ child. A storage room in the bas.e.m.e.nt was lined with shelves packed with canned goods, boxes of pasta, tins of coffee, bottles of wine-there was enough food and drink there to make it unnecessary to shop for months. There was an unloaded pistol on top of Bill's bureau in the master bedroom along with a plastic tube of quarters. There was the debugging device in one of the lower drawers. Rosalie knew that her husband kept other tubes of coins and private possessions and papers in his bureau, too, but she did not pry. His bureau was off limits to her and the children-whatever was on the bureau could be touched by none but himself, and Rosalie always placed his freshly laundered shirts, underwear, and socks at the foot of the bed for him to put away himself. If the children were squabbling over a toy, he threatened to "put it on the bureau," which meant they could not again touch it until he returned it.

He was a good father, strict but also attentative and warm-hearted, and, except for the privacy of his bureau, he did not believe in obscuring any part of his life from them, be it a pistol or a newspaper featuring his picture. He had disagreed with the way Rosalie had been reared, and he told her that as soon as the children were old enough to understand, he would attempt to explain his life to them. Rosalie knew that one of the boys had already asked him why he carried a pistol, and Bill had replied that there were certain people who might wish to harm him, or to harm people he knew, and that a pistol was one way to discourage them. The two older boys now accepted the fact of his carrying a gun as readily as they accepted Hopalong Ca.s.sidy or the other cowboys, detectives, or soldiers they watched each day on television. Someday they would demand a fuller explanation, but Rosalie did not want to worry about that now any more than she wanted to explore her own bewilderment. She sometimes felt that her sanity and security depended on her not knowing and not wanting to know: she did not want to know where her father-in-law was, what her husband did when he was not at home, where her son Charles had come from. She was only too thankful to have Charles, and if she had any regrets about him it was in not having had him sooner, in not having been able to send out birth announcements, although she had done the next best thing-with the birth of her son Joseph in January 1961, she had sent cards to friends and relatives announcing with pleasure "the birth of a brother for Charles."

Rosalie was surprised by her emotional attachment to her children because for years she had not contemplated marriage or a family, considering that her vocation was to become a nun. She felt she was incapable of close human relationships, wanting love on an ethereal level, not a physical one. It was not an escape from reality that made the nunnery seem desirable but rather a longing to remain within the walled-in world that she recognized as reality. She felt safe within the walls, felt comfortable with rules, obedience; she would not have to make any more decisions as a nun than she had as a young woman-the questions were all answered, the path was defined, the rewards guaranteed. She was accustomed to restrictions and denial.

As a teen-age girl she was not permitted to date boys. The only boys she saw aside from her brothers were the cadets that her older brother sometimes brought home from military school. She remembered one she found attractive in manner and appearance, a wealthy South American boy whose parents lived in Acapulco. She liked talking with him, overcoming her natural shyness, and when he wrote her a letter a correspondence had begun. Because of him she learned Spanish in school, thinking that some day they might wish to express things in letters that her parents should not read, but their acquaintanceship never got that far, and during the summer of 1953 she became aware of the presence of Bill Bonanno.

Her parents had been friendly with the Bonannos for years, and Rosalie had always sensed that there was something special about the Bonannos by the extra effort that was made whenever they came to visit the Profaci home. Mrs. Profaci would spend most of the day in the kitchen preparing an elaborate meal, and the table would be set with the best china and silver, and the finest wine would be served. Her father seemed honored whenever the elder Bonanno was in his home, and Rosalie felt the need to respond to these occasions in a certain way, but unable to decide which way was appropiate, she usually became more shy and hesitant than before. Mr. Bonanno was so different from her father, even different from her rich uncle, to whom she compared many older men.

Her father, who was not poor, seemed poor. Though he had interests in real estate, a clothing factory, and a shoe business, he was endlessly frugal and humble, allowing himself one luxury, a modest-sized cabin cruiser, on which he lived during the hay fever season. He dressed in a casual haphazard way that Rosalie knew was embarra.s.sing at times to her older brother in military school, particularly when her father would arrive at the academy to bring her brother home for the holidays in a battered car, wearing a shirt without a tie under a faded Eisenhower jacket and needing a shave. Her father had once bought a farm in upstate New York not far from the convent to which she returned after three years at Visitation, but Rosalie remembered the farm house as a ramshackle place on a hill with a lopsided porch and an even more lopsided picnic table across which wine that was spilled would flow from one end to the other.

By way of contrast, her uncle Joseph Profaci, then the largest single importer of olive oil and tomato paste in the nation, displayed his wealth with ostentation. He adorned his family and himself with jewelry and expensive clothes, and in addition to his comfortable home in Brooklyn, he had a winter place in Miami and a gigantic hunting lodge on a 328-acre estate in New Jersey that was once the summer retreat of President Theodore Roosevelt. Rosalie remembered summers there as a girl with dozens of her cousins, uncles, aunts, and friends of the family, remembered the tremendous feasts and the many children frolicking through the thirty-room house, and how shocked she was when a few young boys sneaked into Joseph Profaci's private chapel and drew moustaches and nipples on the statues of saints.

Joseph Bonanno had somewhat the same aura of opulence as her uncle, but in a more quiet and discreet way. Rosalie could see that Mr. Bonanno liked carefully tailored suits and fine automobiles, but there was a cosmopolitan quality about him and his family that was not so evident in the Profacis. She knew from attending the convent with Catherine Bonanno that the Bonannos frequently took family trips all over the country, read books, went to the theater, were interested in world affairs. Mr. Bonanno spoke French, having lived briefly in France where one of his cousins was a successful painter, and he had also traveled extensively throughout Latin America. Rosalie knew that the Bonannos' eldest son was attending school in Arizona, which she thought of as some exotic place in another world, and when she saw Bill during the summer of 1953 in New York she found it hard to believe that he was, like her, of Sicilian origin-he seemed so American in a lanky casual way, so tall in his Western clothes, he looked like a cowboy, a rancher, there was an inexplicable manner about him that she found different and exciting.

The couple saw a lot of one another that summer, but always in the company of relatives. One day her parents arranged for her to take a motor trip with the Bonannos to Albany and Syracuse, and during the Christmas holidays Rosalie and her older brother were flown to Arizona to visit the Bonannos. In June 1954 she graduated from the convent, but later that summer her father was killed in an accidental explosion of his boat, and she did not go directly into college in the fall. The guardian of her family became Joseph Profaci, who removed the wall dividing the backyards of their neighboring houses in Brooklyn, and Rosalie was then answerable to her uncle, finding him as strict and puritanical as her father had been. When Bill was in town to take her out to a movie or show, it was expected that one of her sisters or cousins sould also go along; Bill had to buy tickets not in pairs, but in threes.

Bill gradually began to resent this custom, and one night he spoke privately to her uncle about it. Although Rosalie never knew what was said, the next night she went out with Bill alone. She was proud of him, impressed by his ability to deal with her uncle, and she was never more happy than on the summer evening in 1955 when, before an a.s.sembled gathering of Profacis, in the center of which sat Joseph Profaci in a high-backed red chair, Bill spoke in Sicilian of his "intentions" toward her. Their engagement was formally announced on January 1, 1956, and Rosalie left Finch College during her freshman year to prepare for the wedding in August. She designed her wedding gown and those of the bridesmaids and accompanied Bill to various hotels to meet with banquet managers to select a ballroom large enough to accommodate the 3,000 reception guests.

Rosalie remembered going from the Plaza to the Pierre, from the Sherry-Netherland to the Waldorf-Astoria, standing in the palatial splendor of empty ballrooms hearing her comments echoing from above. She was impressed with the grand ballroom of the Waldorf, but she and Bill agreed that the gilded boxes of the balcony were too remote from the main floor and that guests occupying them would undoubtedly feel isolated. Rosalie rejected the St. George Hotel without inspecting it because it was in Brooklyn. I no longer want to be a girl from Brooklyn I no longer want to be a girl from Brooklyn, she thought to herself, and she was opposed to the Commodore Hotel's ballroom because that was where Joseph Profaci's two daughters had held their receptions, a reaction she revealed somewhat shamefully to Bill, who seemed to understand. Through most of her lifetime she had been aware of how her father and his other brothers had been overshadowed by her uncle Joseph, and how his branch of the family seemed always to be the first in the Profaci clan with anything new-the first with a new seasonal wardrobe, the first with a television set when such things were not common in homes; and Rosalie was determined that on her wedding day she would not follow her cousins to a "Profaci hotel," which is how she described the Commodore to Bill. Her wedding would be unique and her own: the priest would be flown in from Arizona, thousands of daisies would be sent from California, and she would marry a tall thin man whom she liked to think of as an American cowboy.

When they finally saw the ballroom of the Astor, noting how intimate the large room seemed, its low balcony close to the main floor, they both decided that it would be ideal. And it was. The wedding and the reception was everything that Rosalie had hoped for, as was the honeymoon in Europe and their first year together in Arizona. Even when things began to change, when Bill began to spend more time away from home and Rosalie knew that she had not married a cowboy, it took a while for her to recognize the deterioration of her dream because at first his frequent absences merely added to his mystique, accentuated his separateness from the simplicity of her past.

But after the government began its campaign following Apalachin and after the Arizona press focused on her husband and father-in-law, Rosalie suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable. In the vast open s.p.a.ces of Arizona there was no place to hide, there was no large family within which to lose herself, and she began to yearn for the protectiveness she once had. When Bill was away she felt not only lost but resentful, and when Bill was home she complained incessantly. The arrival of her son Charles was her salvation for a while, but then after they moved from Tucson to Phoenix she slowly began to suspect that Bill had another woman. She sensed this initially by certain small remarks he made: once he said that her body, which she had always pridefully maintained, was getting soft; and on another occasion he observed that she was rather short, a remark that she let pa.s.s, but she felt sure that she was being compared with some tall, lean woman.

One day while visiting her husband's supper club, the Romulus, Rosalie noticed the German girl behind the cash register, and from the way the girl looked at her, awkwardly, nervously, Rosalie decided that she was the one Bill was seeing. Rosalie's suspicions were later confirmed when she impulsively visited the girl's apartment, noticed Bill's clothing in the closet, heard the phone ring and the girl whisper, "Your wife is here."

Rosalie learned much about her husband on that day but she learned more about herself. She became aware of her aggressiveness in pursuing the girl-it was so out of character for her to find out where the girl lived, to boldly appear at her door, and to walk directly into the living room expecting to find Bill. She knew that she must have been driven by sheer desperation-her marriage was breaking up, another woman was replacing her, she saw herself abandoned and humiliated, but instead of accepting these grim circ.u.mstances, submitting like the stoical convent creature she imagined she was, she had angrily fought back to reclaim her husband. For one who had no experience in the maneuvers of love, she had been remarkably decisive and deft; and after she won her husband back, after he admitted that he did not want to lose her, she surprised herself still further by her coolness and aloofness, deciding that she did not want him after all, at least not immediately. She wanted him to pay for his indiscretion, to linger in doubt for a while. She had suffered too much, had become ill from an overdose of sleeping pills, and after her recovery she awoke in a state of alienation, and it was in that state that she left him and returned to Brooklyn with her children and mother, vowing the only way I am going back to Arizona is in a box the only way I am going back to Arizona is in a box.

Now, nearly two years later, Rosalie knew that the bitterness was still with her, and she made no secret of her dissatisfaction with Bill in the letters she wrote to Catherine in California during 1963 and 1964, and frequently referring to him as "your brother," as if she wished to disclaim any relationship with him. Catherine did not reply in her own letters to Rosalie's ill temper; Catherine's replies were warm and friendly, stressing the need for love and loyalty particularly now, reminding Rosalie of the burdens that Bill had borne from boyhood because of his name and his ties to his father.

There were times when Rosalie agreed with Catherine's reasoning and conceded the possibility that she had perhaps failed him in ways as a wife in Arizona and that the additional trouble he was involved in since his return to the East was in part related to her. While the newspapers, the FBI, and the Mafia perhaps all believed that Bill had returned to live in New York solely because of the activities of the Bonanno organization, Rosalie knew that one compelling reason for his return to a city he disliked and his willingness to move into the house of Magliocco was that he wanted to win her back, a fact that his Sicilian pride would probably not allow him to admit. If he had not moved East in 1963, he might not be where he was now, in jail, although Rosalie sometimes thought that jail was the best place for him. At least she knew where he was at night, and as she thought about this she was amused-for the first time in seven years of marriage, she knew where her husband was each and every night of the week.

She also thought that her husband looked very well in jail-during her recent visits she had noticed that he had lost weight and seemed quite relaxed, calm, and self-a.s.sured. She sensed a pride in his manner, he was doing his duty, was doing not what he wanted to do but what he had to do not what he wanted to do but what he had to do-one of his favorite phrases-and Rosalie came away from each visit thinking that her husband was becoming increasingly like his father, proud, philosophical, preoccupied with and strengthened by values of another world at another time. And yet she responded to this, as much as one could respond through the gla.s.s wall in the visitors' room, and she found herself physically attracted to him in a way she had not been in years. His hair was longer and he had lost so much weight that he now looked like the man she had married. He weighed 245 pounds when he was arrested in the barber shop in Tucson last January; by March, partly as the result of an attack of mononucleosis, his weight had fallen to 218, and now after two months in jail it was 203.

He said that his weight had dropped because he was getting plenty of rest in jail, but Rosalie thought that perhaps the opposite was true-in jail he was not allowed to rest, he had to walk a lot, lift things, burn up energy; he did not have people like herself waiting on him constantly, getting him a sandwich, turning off the television set, bringing him a gla.s.s of water. He had to get his own water in jail, which meant getting up and walking to a distant fountain, and on the a.s.sumption that he was too proud and lazy to do this, even though he normally drank enormous amounts of water, he had cut down on his water consumption in jail, thus losing weight.

Rosalie kept this little theory mainly to herself, however, not because her husband lacked the humor to appreciate it but because it was yet another example of her carping, a habit she had fallen into that she hoped to correct. She did not like herself when she was this way, even when she repressed it, nor was she tolerant of this trait in others. And yet there had been times when her unrelieved frustration turned her into a chronic complainer, but she felt justified because, unlike most chronic complainers, she really had something to complain about. Of all the tearful heroines in the television dramas she had watched to help escape the loneliness, none could match the misery and tension of the life she had led in recent years and was still leading now in East Meadow, snugly trapped on a tidy block of ranch houses that resembled her own except that they were not bugged, not tapped, not ambush-trimmed, not equipped with a.r.s.enals, did not have a private grocery store in the bas.e.m.e.nt, plastic tubes of quarters in the bedroom, did not have a jailed husband, a vanished father-in-law, and strange men scrutinizing the property from across the street. It was weird, incredible, she was a marked woman in her own home, she acted like a house guest, always properly dressed when not in the bedroom, never in her bathrobe or with curlers in her hair because she could never be sure who was watching her or who might intrude at any moment of the day or night.

Although the press had reported that her husband and father-in-law were millionaires, no one could prove it by her. She was forced to borrow from her mother this year and she was constantly unnerved by the uncertainty of money. She wondered who would provide for her and the children if something happened to her husband, and she thought often about Anastasia's young widow, whom she had met years ago through her family. Rosalie sometimes thought of herself as a young widow, devoting herself to her children, living with the memory of a husband that in many ways she did not know. If only she could go out and get a job, she would be more financially independent. At twenty-nine she felt sufficiently young and qualified and even eager to go out into the world and earn money, but she could not have live-in help at this time; she had not had anyone since the birth of Felippa. Rosalie remembered with fondness the last mother's-helper she had, a Puerto Rican girl named Elisa, a very gentle and capable person with whom she had been so compatible. Since Elisa did not understand English, Rosalie spoke in Spanish, making use of the language she had studied years ago to communicate with the cadet that her brother had brought home. But after the disappearance of Joseph Bonanno, the agents began to approach Elisa as she waited for the bus at the corner, using Puerto Rican detectives to interrogate her. Elisa knew nothing about the elder Bonanno or his son, and she presumably told the agents little of interest, but not long afterward Elisa left Rosalie for another job.

Now whenever Rosalie had to go out, taking one of the children to the doctor or visiting Bill, she relied on the babysitting of a teen-age daughter of a family friend who lived a few miles away. But during the winter of 1965 Rosalie had rarely gone out. With four young children to care for, with a new house that was not yet organized, she was kept constantly busy indoors. She had begun to unpack the cardboard cartons in the garage that had been sent from Arizona, containing such things as the holiday china her mother had given her and the dolls from the many weddings at which she had been the maid-of-honor and other mementos from happier days. She needed a carpenter to build shelves in the children's rooms, and she wanted a new dining room table-the old one belonging to Mrs. Bonanno was in the bas.e.m.e.nt, too large and st.u.r.dy for the dining area that adjoined the sunken living room with its modern furniture and gold-colored draperies. The living room, which had wall-to-wall carpeting and an impressive polished driftwood sculpture done by an artist Bill knew in California, also contained a large Sylvania, stereophonic high-fidelity record player that her husband had brought home within the last year despite her protests. She thought it was absurd of him to spend close to $1,500 on a stereo when so many more important things were needed for the house, such as a dining room table, and even now her anger was renewed every time she looked at the stereo.

It was typical of him to spend large sums of money on nonessentials, she thought, reminding herself of the life-sized toy bear on wheels that he had brought home one day from F. A. O. Schwartz. As he later explained it, he had been walking along Fifth Avenue when he noticed in the toy store's window a huge giraffe and wondered how much it was. The clerk inside told him it was $300 and spoke in a manner that Bill took to imply the price was beyond his means. Bill then spotted the bear, which seemed smaller than the giraffe and was presumably cheaper-and was told that it, too, was $300. Whether it was the clerk's manner or Bill's hypersensitivity that made him react, Rosalie never knew; she just remembered him opening the front door one day for delivery men rolling in an enormous toy bear on wheels. The bear was now in the bas.e.m.e.nt next to the three-horse merry-go-round that took up nearly half the floor s.p.a.ce and had been given to the children by Bill's father.

Rosalie endured the winter. She nursed her children through three rounds of colds each. She resigned herself to the fact that her son Charles would not be promoted at the end of the school term to the second grade. Charles was marvelous with his hands, creative in the way he constructed huts in the yard out of broken branches and built igloos out of hardened snow blocks collected in the neighborhood and loaded on his sleigh; but he was failing in reading and spelling.

Hoping to break the monotony of her depression, Rosalie dyed her hair blonde, having heard on television commercials that blondes had more fun. But her life did not change. It was still governed by the needs of her children, the ritual of her visits to Bill, and the endless cycle of birthdays, anniversaries, feast days, name days, and reminders of death that she had noted on the calendar that hung on the kitchen wall. With so many aunts and uncles, cousins and nephews and nieces around the nation, to say nothing of her married sister, brothers, and in-laws, there seemed hardly a day that was not in some way a.s.sociated with a person she knew. Although she had not seen most of these kin and compare compare in years, they kept in touch through the mail, exchanging snapshots of their children, mourning the pa.s.sing of their old folks, commenting on the commonplace happenings of their lives, but revealing little that would be of interest-or use-to outsiders. in years, they kept in touch through the mail, exchanging snapshots of their children, mourning the pa.s.sing of their old folks, commenting on the commonplace happenings of their lives, but revealing little that would be of interest-or use-to outsiders.

8.

BILLBONANNO WAS RELEASED FROM PRISON ON JUNE 5, 1965, after he decided to tell the federal grand jury what he had told Maloney on the telephone during the previous December. Bill had been in jail for three months, and he saw no reason why he should remain longer. There was no further word about his father during that time, he rec