26

While hiding in Tucson, I grew a beard.

As much as I might have wanted to remain in Tucson, I couldn’t remain in my desert haunt for long—my responsibilities were in the Volcano. But after my kidnapping, New York City wasn’t safe. Outside my world, I was being hunted by the government; inside my world, some men were interested in toppling me, if not disposing of me altogether. I therefore had to move unnoticed.

Hence the need for a beard and a disguise: a sixty-year-old man with a straggly, silver-flecked beard, dressed in a dark, coarse overcoat, carrying a walking cane, wearing a black astrakhan cap of curled lamb’s wool and a black eyepatch.

When I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought of how proud of me my old drama professor would have been. I doubt whether my own wife would have recognized me if I had walked by her on the street. I could have passed for a devout Hasidic Jew, or an over-the-hill hippie, or a lame pirate. I looked as if I belonged on a Salvation Army soup line—a bent old man lurching down the street.

Dressed in this fashion, I ventured back to Brooklyn.

I felt a little bit like Ulysses returning to the island of Ithaca. After his odyssey, Ulysses returns home disguised as an old beggar. He adopts a disguise in order to have the freedom to move around the island undetected, safe from his enemies. But he also does it to see who in his kingdom has remained loyal to him. My strategy was the same.

No one in the Volcano knew I was back except for some friends I had to take into my confidence. Most people conjectured I was hiding out overseas, perhaps in the Caribbean or even in Sicily. Some people speculated that I had staged my own kidnapping. Some thought I had fled to Montreal. None thought I was anywhere near the Volcano.

For his own protection, I had to leave my son Salvatore in the dark as to my whereabouts. At the end of 1964 Salvatore went to Arizona for income tax purposes. The FBI arrested Salvatore in Tucson on a material witness warrant. He was subpoenaed before a grand jury in New York investigating organized crime and my disappearance.

Salvatore had to appear in court repeatedly. (My other son, Joseph, was also briefly questioned in court in New York.) The government thought Salvatore was keeping something from them. Salvatore refused to answer any questions. A judge cited him for contempt, and Salvatore was sent to jail, where he remained for three months.

The first person I revealed myself to was Johnny Morales, my second, who had led my Family as best he could during my absence. I telephoned him and told him and another friend to meet me inside a store owned by someone we knew. When I walked into the store, Johnny was talking to his friend. On noticing me, Johnny nudged the man and told him in Sicilian,

—Wait until the old man passes and talk low until don Peppino arrives.

In none of my encounters with my loyal friends did any of them recognize me ahead of time. They all had been used to seeing me elegantly dressed and immaculately groomed. Their expectations, more than my beard, kept them from identifying me.

The sweetest moments came when I revealed myself to my friends and they, often in tears, embraced me, laughing through their sobs at my preposterous disguise and at the weird circumstances of our lives. To no one did I divulge details of my kidnapping, although everyone was curious. They had to trust me. They knew that if I kept things from them, it was for their own good.

After I made my initial contacts, I always kept on the go, sometimes traveling alone and sometimes with a personal escort, but always in the general area of the Volcano. There were several houses at my disposal for sleep and shelter, some in Long Island, some in New Jersey and some in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York.

Although I was on the go, there were moments of relaxation. I would go hunting upstate, or go swimming in Long Island Sound. Sometimes my men and I would play golf at a private country club on Long Island. In case of an emergency, my driver would always be parked nearby behind some tree. Most of the time, however, this sort of life was dull.

I was invisible to the police. Throughout my nineteen-month disappearance, the police never suspected I was right under their noses, and for this I have my friends to thank. There was a risk each and every time I revealed myself to anyone. Someone could have informed on me to the police. Or someone could have passed information of my whereabouts to DiGregorio’s dissidents.

One of my most loyal friends was Joe Notaro, who was another group leader in my Family. Notaro was subpoenaed many times as the government attempted to squeeze him for information about me. And yet, throughout this turmoil, he remained steadfast.

I was literally under the protection of my friends, who fed, sheltered and comforted me. Without them I wouldn’t be alive today. In many ways, their trust and loyalty was my greatest reward for all my years as their Father.

*   *   *

The Bonanno Family had an insurrection in progress.

In normal times, when I could move about freely, it would have been relatively easy to deal with Gaspar DiGregorio and his defectors. But I was restricted by extraordinary circumstances: my cool relations with the Commission, my open break with Stefano Magaddino, my problems with the law, my need to keep on the go and in disguise.

I felt like some huge beast mired in mud. Whereas usually no animal would even come near to disturb me, now, stuck in the mud, little birds could land on my head and peck out my eyes. All I could do was try to keep from sinking deeper.

The delay in my reappearance had apparently put my cousin Stefano Magaddino on edge again, and this destroyed whatever meager meeting of the minds we had worked out during our talks at the farmhouse in upstate New York. I had intended to reappear soon after my release, but I was forced to postpone that after my lawyer, William Maloney, blundered by prematurely announcing when I would return. Since Stefano didn’t know the reason for my continued disappearance, he became very nervous. Reverting to his customary form, Stefano suspected me of deliberately remaining away in order to plot and maneuver against him and his puppet, Gaspar.

Around this time, Gaspar’s ineptitude as a leader became evident to those who didn’t know him. I think even Stefano became disgusted with Gaspar, but he couldn’t simply drop him. That would have involved an insufferable loss of face before both the Commission and Stefano’s own Family, many members of which already had reservations about Stefano’s handling of the affair.

To bolster Gaspar, Stefano encouraged Joseph Colombo to incite people to defect from the Bonanno Family. Colombo, now the Father of the Family that had been headed by Joe Profaci and Joe Magliocco, had been instrumental in destroying Magliocco before the Commission. Stefano encouraged Colombo to undermine my leadership. This suited Colombo, because by weakening me, he could strengthen himself and his Family, which like mine was centered in Brooklyn.

The subversive actions of both DiGregorio and Colombo resulted in a great deal of confusion and some bloodshed. The shootings of this period, however, cannot rightly be said to have constituted a war—the Bananas War, as it was dubbed in the press. A war would have resulted in mayhem, in total destruction. What we had was more in the nature of a civil disturbance. We experienced a series of inconclusive skirmishes that dragged on and on.

To describe each individual incident, even if I could, would be tedious. Some people were killed and some were wounded. For the most part, they were men of inconsequential position, men on the fringes of the Family, dissidents looking for any excuse to rebel and advance themselves. What violence there was came as a result of the general confusion rather than as the outcome of a master plan.

Gaspar DeGregorio, the nominal leader of the insurgents, escaped death. I had favored trying to bring back Gaspar into the Family, no matter how much he had disgraced himself. However, the general consensus in the Family was that Gaspar should die.

One day in 1965, after my son had been released from jail on his contempt citation, Salvatore and Johnny Morales and another went to a Brooklyn tavern often frequented by men of my Tradition. At the bar the startled trio saw Gasparino. As the story was later told to me, Johnny and the other were ready to grab their pistols and dispatch Gaspar on the spot, but Salvatore stopped them. At the same time, the tavern owner intervened, and this gave Gaspar the chance to escape unharmed.

When the incident became known to the top members of my Family, they voted to censure Salvatore. They had a valid viewpoint. As long as Gaspar remained alive and continued to rally defectors around him, the well-being of the entire Family was in jeopardy. My Family had tolerated forbearance toward Gaspar from me, their Father, but as the situation became more tense and their own positions more precarious, they couldn’t understand such kindness toward Gaspar from my son, who was a relative newcomer among them.

And yet, I cannot blame Salvatore. If anything, I am proud of his temperance. Gasparino was his godfather and the best man at my wedding. Salvatore had known Gaspar from childhood. Perhaps it would have been better for everyone if Gaspar had been killed. But what a price in conscience Salvatore would have had to pay! He would have had to reject his upbringing.

*   *   *

In this fitful manner, 1965 slowly passed—an engagement here, a bout there, commotion followed by tedium. I had remained undetected, but who knew if a gunman was waiting in ambush around the next corner? I was always conscious that someone out there, some lonely hunter, might have me in his sights.