and politicians and priests, included all the top men of the underworld. Vito Genovese and Frank Costello were there, having requested and received inconspicuous tables against the wall. Albert Anastasia was there (it was the year before his murder in the barbershop of the Park-Sheraton Hotel), and so was Joseph Barbara, whose barbecue party for nearly seventy mafiosi at his home in Apalachin, New York, three weeks after the murder, would be discovered by the police and would result in national publicity and endless investigations. Joseph Zerilli had come with his men from Detroit, and so had the Chicago delegation led by Sam Giancana and Tony Accardo. Stefano Magaddino, the portly old don from Buffalo, cousin of Joseph Bonanno, was given an honored table in front of the dais, and seated near him were other relatives or close friends of the Bonannos and Profacis. All of the twenty-four semi-independent organizations that formed the national syndicate were represented at the wedding, meaning that there were men from New England to New Mexico, and the group from Los Angeles alone totaled almost eighty.
Bill Bonanno, smiling next to his bride on the dais, toasting the guests and being toasted in turn, often wondered during the evening what the FBI would have done had it gotten its hands on the guest list. But there was little chance of that since the list, in code, had been in the careful custody of Frank Labruzzo and his men who were posted at the door to receive the guests and to escort them to their tables. There were no intruders on that night. There was not really a great deal of public concern over the Mafia in 1956. The Kefauver hearings of 1951 were already forgotten, and the Apalachin fiasco was one year away. And so the wedding and reception proceeded smoothly and without incident, with Catherine Bonanno as the maid of honor; and Joseph Bonanno, elegant in his cutaway, presided over the gathering like a medieval duke, bowing toward his fellow dons, dancing with the women, courtly and proud.
After the reception, during which the bridal couple had received in gift envelopes about $100,000 in cash, Bill Bonanno and his bride flew to Europe for a honeymoon. They stayed for a few days at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, then at the Excelsior in Rome; they received special attention in each place and were ushered quickly through customs at the airport. Later they flew to Sicily, and as the plane slowly taxied toward the terminal building in Palermo, Bill Bonanno noticed that a large crowd had gathered behind the gate and that a number of carabinieri were among them, standing very close to Bonanno’s aging, bald-headed uncle, John Bonventre, who seemed rather grim and tense. Bonanno’s first thought was that Bonventre, who had once served in the United States as an underboss in the Bonanno organization, was about to be deported from his native Sicily, to which he had gone the year before to retire, having taken with him from America a lifetime’s supply of toilet paper, preferring it to the coarse brands produced in Sicily. After the plane stopped but before the door opened, a stewardess asked that Mr. and Mrs. Bonanno please identify themselves. Slowly, Bill Bonanno raised his hand. The stewardess then asked that the couple be the first to leave the plane.
Walking down the ramp into the hot Sicilian sun, mountains rising in the distance behind sloping villages of tan stone houses, Bonanno sensed the crowd staring at him, moving and murmuring as he got closer. The old women were dressed in black, the younger men had fixed dark expressions, children were milling everywhere, and the statuesque carabinieri, flamboyantly dressed and brandishing gleaming silver swords, stood taller than the rest. Then the uncle, Bonventre, bursting with a smile of recognition, ran with arms outstretched toward the bridal couple, and crowd followed, and suddenly the Bonannos were surrounded by clutching kissing strangers, and Rosalie, blushing, tried without success to conceal the awkwardness she felt in the center of swarming unrestrained affection. Her husband, however, seemed to enjoy it thoroughly, reaching out with his long arms to touch everyone that he could, leaning low to be embraced by the women and children, basking in the adoration and salutations of the crowd. The carabinieri watched impassively for a few moments, then stepped aside, clearing a path that led toward a line of illegally parked automobiles waiting to take the couple to the first of a series