of celebrations that would culminate with a visit on the following day to Castellammare del Golfo, the town in western Sicily where Joseph Bonanno was born and where the earlier Bonannos had long ruled as uomini rispettati—men of respect.
Rosalie had hoped that they would also visit her father’s birthplace, a town just east of Palermo called Villabate, but her husband, without ever explaining why, indicated that this was impossible. Moments after he had landed at Palermo his uncle had whispered a message just received from the United States from the elder Bonanno insisting that the couple avoid Villabate. A number of friends and distant relatives of the Profacis still living in Villabate were then struggling with a rival gang for control over certain operations, and there had already been seven murders in the past ten days. It was feared that the enemies of Profaci’s friends in Villabate might seek revenge for their dead upon Bill Bonanno or his wife, and although Rosalie persisted in her request to see Villabate, her husband managed to avoid the trip after making endless excuses and offering a busy itinerary of pleasant distractions. He was also relieved that Rosalie had not questioned, nor had even seemed to notice, the quiet group of men that followed them everywhere during their first day of sightseeing in Palermo. These men, undoubtedly armed, were serving as bodyguards for the Bonanno couple, even sitting outside the couple’s hotel door at night to guarantee that no harm would come to them in Sicily.
The journey to Castellammare del Golfo, sixty miles west of Palermo, was the highpoint of the Sicilian visit for Bill Bonanno. As a boy he had seen on the walls at home framed photographs of his father’s town, and he later noted references to it in history books and travel guides, although the references were very brief and superficial—it was as if the writers, with few exceptions, had quickly driven through the town without stopping, perhaps being intimidated by one published report claiming that eighty percent of Castellammare’s adult male population had served time in prison.
There was no social stigma attached to this, however, because most of the local citizens regarded the law as corrupt, representing the will of invaders who had long sought to control the islanders and exploit the land through the conqueror’s law. As with most of Sicily, the history of Castellammare had been turbulent for centuries, and Bonanno remembered reading that the island was conquered and reconquered no less than sixteen times—by Greeks, Saracens, and Normans, by Spaniards, Germans, and English, by various combinations and persuasions ranging from Holy Crusaders to Fascists. They had all come to Sicily and did what men do when away from home, and the history of Sicily was a litany of sailor’s sins.
As the caravan of cars arrived at Castellammare, having driven for two hours along narrow mountain roads above the sea, Bill Bonanno felt a sudden sense of familiarity with the landscape that was beyond mere recognition from pictures. He felt united with all that he had imagined for years, all that he had heard as a boy from the reminiscing men gathered around his father’s dinner table on Sunday afternoons. The town was actually quite beautiful, a tranquil fishing village built along the bottom of a mountain, and at the very tip of the land, on a jagged rocky edge splashed by waves, stood the old stone castle that gave the town its name. The castle, built many centuries ago by the Saracens or Aragons, no one was absolutely certain, had served as the town’s lookout for spotting invading ships; but now it was a decaying structure of no purpose, and the elder Bonanno and the other men had recalled playing in it as boys.
Near the castle, along the small beach, were the fishermen, weatherworn and ruddy, wearing black berets; they were pulling in their nets as the Bonanno party passed but were too busy to notice the line of cars. In the town square, near a church built four hundred years ago, were many men walking slowly, arm in arm, making many gestures with their hands. The stone houses, most of them two or three stories high with balconies in front, were arranged in tight rows along narrow cobbled roads over which was heard the clacking sounds of donkeys pulling colorfully painted wagons between the motor traffic. Here and there, sunning themselves in front of their doors, were groups of women, the unmarried ones seated with their