A Cautionary Tale

The immigration is understandable. America is, after all, the land of opportunity, where those who are ambitious can rise. Most of the young men who leave depressed, poverty-stricken Sicily, with its stifling traditions and high unemployment, work their way toward this goal in their new homeland by digging ditches, laying bricks, driving taxis or waiting on tables in restaurants owned by more affluent relatives. But a few do not. Their choice of employer: the Mafia.

Cesare (“Tall Guy”) Bonventre was one of the latter. When he entered the U.S. 16 years ago from Castellammare del Golfo at the age of 17, he had few skills beyond a natural ability with a lupara, a sawed-off shotgun. But he was quick and good-looking, and he did have some connections: his uncle Peter was a founding member of New York’s Bonanno crime family and his uncle Giovanni was one of the family’s leading underbosses. Bonventre was impatient; so when he tired of the construction job his “family” had found for him, he sought and got something better. He and his pal Baldassare Amato were taken on as bodyguards for Bonanno Consigliere (counselor) Carmine Galante.

They did their job poorly — or perhaps too well. In July 1979, three masked gunmen burst into a Brooklyn restaurant in which Galante was eating lunch and cut the old man down in a fusillade of bullets. Bonventre and Amato fled the scene unharmed. Hearing that the police were looking for them, they reappeared a few days later and submitted to questioning. The police, who could prove nothing, suspected that the pair at least had knowledge of the assassination. So did members of the Mob, who viewed Bonventre with a new respect. “It takes such guts to kill your boss,” said a ranking New York consigliere. “That Cesare gained respect for his fearlessness. Many — all — were afraid of a man who could kill his own boss.”

The old bosses had good cause for fear as Bonventre, then 28, began to expand his power, cutting down anyone who stood in his way. “He killed this man. He killed that man,” said the consigliere. “Perhaps he killed 20 men.” Bonventre pressed the man who had once been his patron to yield to him his ownership of a restaurant that he coveted. He forced Mafia Don Frank Lupo, 56, out of his established territory. The don had to set himself up a new one in Miami. Bonventre bought himself a sleek, red Ferrari and took to wearing evening clothes as he held court at his newly acquired Brooklyn restaurant. Finally, he talked of going to war with the powerful Gambino family.

The indictment last April of Cesare Bonventre, along with others suspected of involvement in the “pizza connection,” probably prevented a bloody New York gang war. It also brought an abrupt end to Bonventre’s rapid rise. Before the police could arrest him, he abandoned his $50,000 Ferrari and drove away into the night in a nondescript blue Buick that was registered to no one important.

His family said that Bonventre, who was suspected of cooperating with the police, would be back. But local Mafiosi knew better, especially when Bonventre’s wife gave birth to their first child the next day. “He didn’t run,” explained one Mob member. “No Sicilian would stay away from his wife who had given him a first son. The whole neighborhood knew that. You could tell when they presented themselves to his wife with the gifts and envelopes without Cesare being there. He must have been dead.”

He was. A month after his disappearance, Cesare Bonventre turned up in a warehouse in Garfield, N.J. He had been shot five times, chopped into pieces and stuffed into three 55-gal. oil drums. He was 33 years old and, as far as his fellow Mafiosi were concerned, a victim of his own ambition. “In his mind, in his brain,” said one, “he thought he was already the boss. He was arrogant.” He was also foolish. In a world where “Honor thy father” is more than just a religious commandment, arrogance can be fatal.