Surveillance officers trailed Vito at a discreet distance in the weeks leading up to Christmas 2013. He looked happy and younger than his sixty-seven years as he bounced from bar to restaurant to bar wishing old contacts the best of the season. Perhaps he had some special holiday surprise planned for his mother, wife, children and grandchildren. Maybe he was just happy to be alive.
Vito routinely returned home at 2 a.m. This was just as it had been in his younger days, when he held court in corner tables of the city’s best bars and restaurants, accepting drinks as tributes until he was tipsy by the wee hours of the morning. All appeared well through the evening of Saturday, December 21, until Giovanna found him unconscious on the floor of their new home after midnight.
Vito was confused and feverish when rushed by his family to Sacré-Coeur hospital in the Cartierville district suffering from what appeared to be lung complications. It was the same hospital where his father had been treated just a few years ago while a prisoner at the Bordeaux Prison. The hospital was overbooked that night, but Vito was admitted without debate. Despite the hour, friends and family gathered to wish him well and there was a collective sigh of relief with news that Vito’s health appeared to be improving. Then, just an hour later, as he lay in bed surrounded by family, Vito’s heart stopped for good.
Hospital officials attributed death to natural causes, then refused to elaborate. Reports surfaced that he’d had aggressive lung cancer, most likely brought on by years of smoking, and that he had contracted pneumonia. Stories followed that he’d chosen to delay cancer treatments so that he could spend the holidays with his family.
Such was Vito’s world that it was more puzzling that he died of reportedly natural causes than if he had been the victim of an assassin. There had been no rumours or signs of his declining health, as would be expected from cancer. If anything, he appeared robust, closing down restaurants and bars like a man decades younger. He also appeared to have gained weight when he returned from the Dominican Republic a month earlier.
Since Vito hadn’t taken out a government health card, it was tough to chart his medical history. He did complain of a lung ailment when he was sentenced in New York back in 2007, but his medical checkup on his way back into Canada in 2012 didn’t show any serious medical problems. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to slip something into one of his many drinks, like the cyanide that ended Ponytail De Vito’s life. But Vito’s death would remain a mystery: within hours of his passing, it was announced that there would be no autopsy.
There were no tears in some quarters of southern Ontario. Believing that Vito had a list of at least another half-dozen enemies marked for death, one Woodbridge cannoli maker was said to have donned a bulletproof vest immediately after Vito’s release from prison and then started taking extended vacations.
No obituary was written for the website of the Rizzuto-owned Complexe Funéraire Loreto in Saint-Léonard, but none was necessary. Hundreds lined up in the cold for his visitation, while others drove directly into the underground parking of the ultra-modern funeral facility. This convenience was appreciated by visitors who preferred to stay away from police and press cameras. Some guests arrived after regular visitation hours.
Greeting them all, and appearing very much the man in charge, was Rocco (Sauce) Sollecito. He had visited Ontario at least a half-dozen times in the months before Vito’s death, so he was familiar with many of the out-of-province guests. Some respected him for his muscle, others for his business sense. Some of the mourners he welcomed arrived in a chartered bus, like the one used for Paolo Cuntrera’s wedding anniversary in 2011.
Among those paying their respects was Rock Machine founder Salvatore Cazzetta, who was on parole for a massive cigarette-smuggling operation through the Kahnawake reserve. Cazzetta was now wearing a Hells Angels patch and was considered by many to be the top member of les Hells who wasn’t behind bars. At fifty-six years of age, he looked every inch the old-school biker, with his mane of grey hair and arms full of tattoos. Also paying their respects were street-gang member Gregory Wooley, representatives from the New York mob and a group of men who arrived in a van with a Mohawk Warriors flag.
Other visitors included members of the old Cotroni family and the Ontario ’Ndrangheta. There was an impressive number of floral bouquets, including at least one bearing the word Nonno and another with Farewell my friend, but none was larger than the one sent by the Ontario Hells Angels.
The funeral was set for Église Notre-Dâme-de-la-Défense in Little Italy, the same historic church in which Vito’s family held ceremonies for Nick Jr. and Nicolò, and which had been the site of so many funerals in the milieu before, including for the Violi brothers.
At the church doors, mourners in long black overcoats and furs were asked by security guards if they were friends of the family before they were allowed inside. Vito’s ceremony was simple, with an organist, violinist, trumpet player and small operatic choir. Mass was conducted entirely in Italian, but there was no eulogy. Vito didn’t feel the need to explain himself in life and no one from his inner circle felt the need to justify him now that he lay at the front of the room in a coffin. When there was doubt about what to say, silence had always remained the best option.
Among those standing outside, braving the bitterly cold, minus-twenty-five temperature and sharp wind, was a Montreal waiter who remembered Vito as a polite, if careful, customer. The waiter had known Vito for two decades and recalled how Vito had told him to watch that no one poisoned his food when dining out. Who could say if another waiter from another restaurant knew why Vito’s health had suddenly spiralled in the final hours of his life? If one did, he stood to gain nothing by talking about it.
An hour later, bells tolled as they had for the Violis and so many others. Vito’s body, Libertina and the remnants of his family were led from the church by greying men in matching black fedoras, a tribute to Vito’s beloved father. Vito was escorted slowly to the St. Francis of Assisi cemetery, in a convoy of a dozen black limousines that had been parked on Dante Street.