Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [36]
But Ponzi was serious. After so many rootless years, he was ready to settle down. Rose fit his every dream of a loving, beautiful wife, and he pursued her as ardently as he had money and success. Nearly every day he sent sodas or flowers to her office, and whenever she accepted his invitations he would treat her to a night at the movies or the symphony. If she begged off by saying she was taking her nephews and nieces to the beach at Nantasket, Ponzi would show up unannounced on the ferry. He was relentless, and she relented. He told her about his boyhood in Italy and his adventures in the United States, though he left out his years in prison. Whenever he described his activities during that period, he said only that he had been involved in “investigations.” At times he would suggest mysteriously that he had been working on behalf of the Italian government.
Not long after, Ponzi’s immediate supervisor died and he was promoted to a position that doubled his salary to fifty dollars a week. Flush with his new job, he felt ready to make good on the vow he’d made the night he’d met Rose. A glistening, full-carat stone in a Tiffany setting would have cost perhaps three hundred dollars, but that was out of his league. So he bought what amounted to a diamond chip. This time when he told Rose he wanted to marry her, she did not laugh. She accepted the ring.
During their engagement, Rose received a letter from Ponzi’s mother, welcoming her to the family and sharing some difficult news. Imelde Ponzi suspected her son would not tell his bride-to-be all the stories of his past, and Imelde wanted to be sure Rose knew that her betrothed had spent time in prison. The letter explained the cases in the same innocent light that Ponzi had used when describing them to his mother—he took blame for the forgery to spare the Zarossi family, and he was duped into pleading guilty to the immigrant-smuggling charge. Rose accepted her mother-in-law’s explanations and admired Ponzi even more for his chivalry toward Zarossi and the Italian immigrants. It fit perfectly in her mind with his donation of skin to Pearl Gossett, a story she had heard from Ponzi himself. At Imelde’s suggestion, Rose did not tell Ponzi that she knew of his prison past. Both women believed it would damage his ego if he thought Rose viewed him as an ex-convict.
On February 4, 1918, Rose Maria Gnecco and Charles Ponzi—he had dropped Carlo altogether—stood before the marble tabernacle inside the basement sanctuary of Saint Anthony’s Church on Vine Street, in the heart of Somerville’s Italian district. As rays of winter sunlight angled through ground-level stained-glass windows, the Reverend Nazareno Properzi pronounced them husband and wife. Rose’s sister Theresa was her maid of honor, and Ponzi’s friend Lawrence Avanzino, a grocer, stood as best man. The wooden church pews were filled with Gneccos, extended family members, and friends. Ponzi’s joy was tinged only by his mother’s absence: He could not afford to bring her over from Italy.
The newlyweds moved into a tidy five-room apartment a few miles from the church, near Tufts College, on tree-lined Powder House Boulevard. Their apartment was the upstairs half of a two-family house owned by Anders Larsen, a Danish immigrant factory worker and his wife, Karen, who lived on the first floor. Ponzi leapt happily into married life—the devil-may-care boy who’d gambled and drunk away his nights in Rome had matured into a devoted husband who hurried home after work at J. R. Poole. He made certain he and Rose were never apart for even a single night. Rose stopped working to care for their home, so there was little money for extras. They went to dinner and the theater once a week—it thrilled Rose to have a night out with no cooking—but most often they stayed home, ate a meal Rose prepared, and listened to music. Sometimes Ponzi would serenade his young wife by strumming a song on the mandolin. Afterward, Rose would gingerly put away her few prized belongings. One, a sterling silver ladle that was a wedding present from a