Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [241]
Two grand sounded like a steal to me, I thought (but did not say), for it was beginning to dawn on me that if I said yes, Mr. F. would almost certainly send his bodyguard out to steal a late-model Buick off the streets for me. Besides, Mr. F.’s generosity was not only criminal, it was spurious. It would cost him nothing to steal a car, in exchange for which he would be getting a perfectly legitimate Beetle, with a proper VIN and registration, plus two thousand dollars in cash. I, on the other hand, would have a bigger, more glamorous car, for which I might go to prison the first time I was stopped by the police.
I managed to get out of the “gift” by blaming my wife and her sentimental fondness for the VW, though not before Mr. F., the bodyguard, and I had dinner together at a dark little Italian restaurant in deepest Brooklyn, where the bar was occupied entirely by wide-hipped figures straight out of Guys and Dolls. I was an object of considerable merriment, since Mr. F. introduced me to everyone as the man who had turned down a free Buick.
We remained in touch and on friendly terms for many years, until Mr. F. was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment. It is a measure of what the supposed good life in the Mafia was really like that when Mr. F. was arrested, among the many charges, including conspiracy to murder, was the one that he had neglected to pay sales tax on the purchase of the pony for his daughter.
Perhaps because my relationship with Mr. F. had been cordial, I was an easy mark when an old-time Hollywood agent called to ask if I would read the autobiography of Mr. B.—as Joseph Bonanno was known to his associates. To his intimates he was Don Peppino, to his subordinates simply Mr. B. or The Don, and to law-enforcement people and the tabloid press he was Joe Bananas.
Under any name, Bonanno, then seventy-seven years old, was one of the most feared and respected figures in organized crime, the associate of Charles (“Lucky”) Luciano, Alberto Anastasia, Carlo Gambino, and Joe Profaci (whose daughter Bonanno’s elder son married), indisputably the boss of his own “family,” and perhaps the highly controversial “Boss of Bosses” and head of “The Commission.” It was widely rumored that Mario Puzo had based Don Corleone in The Godfather on the character and the career of Bonanno, and Gay Talese had written a much-acclaimed, best-selling book, Honor Thy Father, about Bonanno’s relationship with his son Salvatore (“Bill”) and with his contentious colleagues on The Commission.
Being the subject of a book, fiction or nonfiction, though bad enough, was one thing; writing one’s own was quite another. No “godfather” had ever written a book or even been tempted to, and Bonanno’s decision to do so was bewildering to his fellow mafiosi that the subject came up on countless FBI taped intercepts of their conversations. For example, at a meeting in the Staten Island home of Paul Castellano, the boss of the Gambino crime family, the FBI heard the family consigliere, Joe N. Gallo, remark to his don, on the subject of Bonanno’s book, “It makes you wonder, is this son of a bitch senile, or is he a fucking nut?” Many of Bonanno’s rivals doubted that he was a nut and assumed that the book was some form of plea bargain with the feds. It was certainly the most eagerly awaited book in Mafia history—a group of people not hitherto known for their interest in literature.
Even in a world full of colorful figures, Bonanno was regarded as something of an eccentric. While the other dons lived in the shadows, Bonanno was a public figure and courted the media. He was viewed by most of his colleagues with a combination of suspicion and bewilderment. In a world where most of the players were, at best, semiliterate, Bonanno read poetry, boasted of his knowledge of the classics, and gave advice to his cohorts in the form of quotes from Thucydides or Machiavelli.
Of course Bonanno’s manuscript