Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [242]
Still, reading between the lines, the history of the Mafia in America was there, written by an insider and a participant. He described in great detail his own rise to power, the jockeying among the various factions, and the gangland executions by which “order” was maintained, often uneasily, among them. He gave a frank account of his attempt to machine-gun some of Al Capone’s men, who had unwisely journeyed from Chicago to interfere in the affairs of the New York families. Bonanno described Capone (who was apparently not a sore loser, since he presented Bonanno with a gold and diamond watch) as “a rather jolly fellow,” but he judged people and events by his own strict Sicilian standards, and seldom criticized those who, like Capone, had not been born into “the tradition,” with its unforgiving code of behavior. Bonanno’s admiration went to men such as his father-in-law, Don Calorio Labruzzo, a retired butcher, whose pride was so touchy that he carried a thick cane with which to beat anyone who insulted his sense of honor.
Although Bonanno had a literary agent, his real representative was in fact his son Bill. Tall, good-looking, conservatively, even elegantly, dressed, Bill Bonanno rather resembled Kris Kristofferson and did not show any obvious sign of following in his father’s footsteps, except for the fact that he required his parole officer’s permission to travel.
It was to him, therefore, that I expressed certain questions and reservations about the book, once we had bought it. In some areas, I felt, his father was being remarkably, perhaps even dangerously, frank, while in others I felt that he was holding back. Bill Bonanno did not disagree but did not want to suggest what his father might or might not add. He was being uncharacteristically cautious, I discovered, because his father had been outraged by Honor Thy Father, in part because Bill had cooperated with Talese rather too fully. The quarrel had since been patched up, but it had made Bill gun-shy of any direct involvement in literary matters concerning his father, quite apart from the fact that this book was intended to be a reply to Talese’s assertions about the Mafia and organized crime. If we wanted changes, Bill said, we would have to go to Tucson and see his father.
Since it seemed like a good opportunity to escape from winter in New York, I made arrangements to fly with Margaret to Tucson, close to where Bonanno lived.
THE BONANNO home bore no relationship to the grandiose and funereal family compound of The Godfather. A modest brick house with a narrow patch of lawn, it resembled its neighbors and showed no signs of any special concern for security.
Bonanno had gone to a good deal of trouble to make our stay agreeable. He had flown his daughter Catherine in from California, to act as Margaret’s companion, in case she wanted to go shopping, and laid on a lavish spread for the luncheon that celebrated our arrival. The don himself was a ruddy, cheerful man. Despite the heart attacks and an operation for bladder cancer, he seemed fairly robust, although one had the sense that age and illness had somehow shrunken him. For a man who had lived most of his life in the United States, his English was difficult to understand, first because he talked in a low, whispering (but by no stretch of the imagination menacing) growl, and second because his Sicilian accent was impenetrably thick. For a man of his age, he seemed astonishingly lively and energetic, but he was able to change himself into a mumbling, forgetful, harmless old man in an instant, with a skill that