by Lamothe, Lee
Catalano’s drug organization, newly emerging in Brooklyn, consisted of a host of Sicilian-born and, more important, Sicilian-made Mafia members. Among them were men with strong ties to the Sixth Family: Bonventre, Amato, Giovanni Ligammari, Santo “Tony” Giordano, Filippo Casamento and Giuseppe Baldinucci. Bonventre and Amato arrived in New York through Canada. Much later, Casamento and Baldinucci would both return to New York after being deported to Italy, arriving after first visiting with Sixth Family associates in Canada. Ligammari had also been seen meeting and working with key Sixth Family leaders.
Not only did the Zips start flooding New York with heroin, but they supplied traffickers in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Detroit. Repatriating the profits out of America to Europe and Canada, the Catalano faction utilized legitimate money-moving channels, including the Royal Bank of Canada and the Bank of Nova Scotia, both huge Canadian banking institutions with branches around the world. Other profits were channeled to the Sixth Family, who moved the bulk of the cash through Montreal’s far looser banking system and on to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
By the mid-1970s, Catalano was being unmasked to authorities by several informants. Still a man of some mystery, he was, however, turning up in several investigations, mostly as a passing, collateral target when other Bonanno members were under surveillance. In 1975, he had been arrested while riding in a car with two other Sicilian mafiosi; an unregistered handgun had been seized and Catalano was convicted, serving three years of a five-year sentence. Around the same time, he was already in a dispute with Licata: tradition had it that the baccarat game that Licata ran “floated,” meaning that it moved once a year through a circuit of mob-controlled cafés in the area. Licata, however, was resisting the move. He did not much like the Zips and was particularly disdainful of Catalano. Licata was working to undermine the Zips any way he could.
Despite Catalano’s growing presence in Brooklyn, which was not going unnoticed by police, he was just another name in the broad Bonanno Family tree; his true role and importance in the underworld would not be revealed until after the Sixth Family completed its take-over of Montreal.
It would appear that for Catalano, membership in the Bonanno Family was a convenient formality. He had a job to do, and that was to move heroin. He seems to have had no loyalty to the Bonanno bosses, and he had little to do with fellow made members from America, who watched in envy as he amassed power and respect that seemed out of proportion to his quiet life.
“The highest American boss in the Mafia here is beneath the newest recruit in Sicily, both in stature and power,” said a trusted old associate of a major Sicilian-born mafioso drug trafficker. “Each member of a family in Sicily carries with him the weight of the entire family.” When told what Frank Coppa had said of the induction ceremony of Bonventre and Amato, during which they would have vowed to protect the Bonanno Family to the death, the man shook his head.
“If this is true, you can bet the Sicilian had his fingers crossed,” he said with a smile. “The loyalty only goes to one place: Sicily.”
As heroin profits poured in, Catalano and his crew began showing signs of unusual prosperity on the depressed strip of Knickerbocker Avenue. They drove expensive cars. They bought homes that were the envy of local mobsters who, in some cases, were living hand-to-mouth. Cesare Bonventre, in particular, caused a stir with his high fashion designer clothing in the style of the day, favoring open-necked striped dress shirts and tinted aviator glasses—outdoors and in. Along Knickerbocker Avenue, a $2,000 designer suit was difficult to ignore. What is more, at the nightly card games, the Sicilian gangsters—the Zips—were slapping down money at a dizzying rate.
Money was the very thing that men such as Pietro Licata in Brooklyn and Paolo Violi in Montreal could not control, contain or suppress. And it was drug trafficking that was bringing in the cash. Licata, like Violi, tried to intervene.
“He no like drugs,” Ronsisvalle said of Licata. “He say: no, no no [to heroin] on Knickerbocker Avenue. They say, ‘Okay.’ Then they kill him.”
Licata, despite his longevity in the mob, had only the code of the American Mafia to protect him from the Zips. It was not enough. Licata was dispatched, and the Zips quickly moved in to fill the void. As would happen in several similar cases, the murders of American mobsters drew no retaliation against the Zips.
Despite Luigi Ronsisvalle’s old-school view of the Mafia, he was certainly more flexible than Licata, and he soon found himself fitting in well within the new regime. He became a heroin courier. From Knickerbocker Avenue he started making dozens of trips to Florida and Los Angeles, carrying the Zips’ drugs. One load totaled 45 kilos; another, four kilos, he said. His life was planes, trains and automobiles. He made more than a dozen trips to Chicago on Amtrak, each time carrying about 40 kilos of heroin in his luggage. Ronsisvalle detailed another 15 heroin loads he ferried from the Bonanno Family to the Gambinos. After a brief interruption in his travels owing to a shortage of supply, trafficker Felice Puma, Carmine Galante’s godson, told Ronsisvalle that the drugs were once again flowing.
“We are in business again,” Puma told him. “Do you know, Luigi, the pipe from Canada that brings oil to the U.S.? We got the same thing—with heroin.”
MONTREAL, 1977
The tension that led to Pietro Licata’s murder mirrored in almost perfect symmetry the situation between Violi and the Sixth Family in Montreal. To the chagrin of the Sixth Family, Violi could not be eliminated as quickly or with as much ease as Licata had been in Brooklyn. While the code of the American Mafia was often trampled on by the Zips, the ’Ndrangheta code was something entirely different. Still, the spike in large-scale heroin trafficking that arose after the Licata murder has to have impressed upon them how profitable clearing the blockage could be.
With violence on the horizon, the Sixth Family went into war mode. Their core group drew closer, and they stepped up security. Intrigue was rife, as the loyalty of underworld figures was assessed and reassessed. Weapons were secured and kept at hand. And Vito, the future of the family, was moved out of harm’s way.
In 1976, after his release from jail, when tensions in Montreal were reaching their zenith, Vito joined his father in Venezuela, where he would be shielded from rival mobsters and police. He would stay in South America for the next three years, while war drums pounded in Montreal.
CHAPTER 13
MONTREAL, FEBRUARY 1976
Valentine’s Day, when romance is in the date book if not always in the hearts of long-married couples, was a time for Pietro Sciarra to put aside the consuming intrigue of the Rizzuto-Violi power struggle in Montreal and snuggle close to his wife. He had been in the hot seat lately, and the pressure had been intense. In some ways, there was more pressure on him than there was on Paolo Violi and Nick Rizzuto, for Sciarra was caught in the middle of these two indomitable forces. Even though he was Sicilian he was a trusted advisor to the Calabrian Violi—police describe him as Violi’s consigliere—and had openly sided with his boss. Several attempts had been made by the Sixth Family to bring Sciarra into their new Sicilian-centered reality. These were entreaties he had explicitly refused.
Sciarra was a Sicilian mafioso Violi had embraced and welcomed when he fled to Canada. Violi valued Sciarra for his ability to listen and for offering sober, sound advice. Violi shared with him some of his most private thoughts and trusted him with serious business, particularly when it involved interactions with those outside his milieu. Sciarra was, in a way, Violi’s minister of external relations. When Vic Cotroni was jailed by the Quebec organized crime commission, it was Sciarra that Violi sent to New York to plead his case for being named acting boss of the Montreal decina. And when a man named Frank Tutino ran for public office in the 1974 city election, it was Sciarra that he sent to suggest to Tutino that he withdraw from the race, after Violi had thrown his support behind a rival candidate. (Tutino refused, but was trounced at the polls.) And it was Sciarra that Violi relied on for advice on how to
deal with the Rizzutos and his Sixth Family kin. Sciarra was repaid with respect and a fond nickname from Violi, who was often heard calling him Zio—“Uncle.”
Even though he was skilled at diplomacy, Sciarra was not all talk. In Italy he had been declared by a judicial tribunal to be a member of the Mafia and sentenced to preventive detention under anti-Mafia laws. To avoid prison, he had fled to Montreal. His status as a fugitive and a mafioso, however, did not prevent him from traveling easily back and forth, entering and re-entering Canada and Italy, seemingly at his pleasure. Although deportation orders were eventually issued against him in Canada, he filed repeated court appeals, extending his stay by years. He was free on bail from ongoing immigration proceedings when, just weeks before the Valentine’s Day movie date with his wife, he was called to testify before the Quebec crime commission. Smartly dressed in a dark pinstripe suit and spotted tie, Sciarra was asked about his links to organized crime.
“Do you know what the Mafia is?” Judge Jean Dutil, the commission’s president, asked Sciarra, after hearing extensive evidence about his involvement with Violi in running the affairs of the Montreal mob.
“No,” Sciarra said, looking perplexed.
“You don’t have any idea of what Mafia means?”
“No,” he said, with a straight face.
“But you were designated by the anti-Mafia law!” the judge exclaimed.
“I don’t know what anti-Mafia means.”
With all of these tensions, Sciarra’s desire for a quiet, relaxing night out with his wife is understandable. For their Valentine’s date, however, he chose an American classic dubbed into Italian—Il Padrino parte seconda, or The Godfather, Part II. Many a mafioso has expressed admiration for the famous series of Mafia movies that presents their traditions in such a romantic light. After the couple watched two generations of the fictional Corleone family solve their mounting problems with acts of murder, they left the small theater that was something of a family holding, owned, as it was, by Palmina Puliafito, sister of Vic Cotroni.
If a director were looking for a location to film a mob rub-out, he would have to look no further than the area around this theater, with its faded, inner-city feel that came from being nestled in the shadows between expressways. Arm in arm, Sciarra and his wife were walking to the parking lot when a hooded man stepped from the darkness. The masked figure quickly drew a 12-gauge shotgun and leveled it at Sciarra. There must have been a sudden moment of panicked understanding by the mobster before the blast wrenched him from his wife’s arm and knocked him to the ground, where he lay dying.
If Sciarra had thought his Sicilian blood offered him some insulation from the Sixth Family, or if he felt his patron, Violi, was powerful enough to protect him, he was terribly shortsighted on both counts. Straddling two worlds had made Sciarra particularly vulnerable: he was a member of the Sicilian Mafia and, as such, the Sicilian Mafia had no need to go through diplomatic channels or take into consideration another mob group’s code. They could deal with him in the way they wanted.
The blast that killed Sciarra was the opening shot in a war that had really been declared three years before. In the wake of Sciarra’s murder, police investigators and mobsters of all stripes braced for an all-out war in Montreal.
A careful chess player might take out an opponent’s strong supporting pieces before advancing on his king. It weakens the opposition, makes the final assault safer, with fewer casualties and, most important, saps the opponent’s ability to raise an effective counter-attack. Such moves by a tactician—a careful planner who thinks before moving, never rushing—might take more time, but are calculated to lead inexorably toward the final, decisive victory. It is this strategy, that of a chess player, that police ascribe to the Rizzuto organization when it finally moved against Violi. The removal of Sciarra was a sound opening position; it garnered attention, made a clear point and removed a valuable strategic asset from the enemy. But there were other obstacles blocking the path to power, and additional targets in this creeping, rather than sweeping, coup d’état.
Francesco Violi was nine years younger than Paulo Violi and yet was the tallest and most physical of the family. The top of Paolo Violi’s head barely made it past Francesco’s ears, and while Paolo Violi had a certain girth, his center of gravity was lower in the gut than that of Francesco, whose shoulders were broad and muscular. Francesco’s physical attributes had been put to good use; he had accepted his role as an enforcer, the most trusted of the family’s muscle, and dutifully did much of the dirty work, seemingly without question or compunction. He would do anything to protect his brother and the family name. He could be cruel and stern, quick to hit and slow to relent. Francesco was considered even more volatile than his brother, who was known for his temper. If Paolo Violi went to war, he would want Francesco in the front lines. And if Paolo was hit, Francesco could be expected to explode with bloodthirsty rage and exact an awful revenge as a matter of honor. This family dynamic did not go unnoticed.
On February 8, 1977—just six days shy of the anniversary of Sciarra’s murder—Francesco Violi was working in the office of Violi Importing and Distributing Co. Ltd., a family firm located in an industrialized stretch of Rivière-des-Prairies, on the northern shore of the Island of Montreal. Francesco was apparently alone and talking on the telephone at his desk, set well inside the office, when assailants marched in and opened fire. The attackers—police believe there were at least two—did not wish to botch the job; besides a shotgun blast to the face, Francesco’s body was peppered with bullets from a pistol.
“Although it was not proven,” says an FBI report from 1985, “Nick Rizzuto is suspected of ordering this murder.”
Paolo Violi was in jail at the time, serving the last of his sentence for contempt. He had been greatly shaken by the murder of Sciarra, and was no doubt terribly upset by the death of his brother. He would have known by then, if not before, that he was a marked man. And yet, upon his release from jail, he remained impassive and restrained. There is no indication he was rallying his troops for war. He maintained many of his old routines and old associations, visiting gangsters and friends alike along the familiar streets of Saint-Léonard. And even though the Reggio Bar, his old headquarters on Jean-Talon, had been sold to a pair of Sicilian mobsters, he continued to visit and could often be seen there sipping espresso.
Despite the felling of Sciarra and Francesco Violi, there was—unbelievably—still talking to be done. A last-ditch effort was made to settle the dispute. It is unknown who insisted on the meeting, for it is difficult to imagine anyone believing that things could now be settled in any other way than more bullets and blood. And yet, there it was, a face-to-face meeting arranged in 1977 between Nick Rizzuto and Paolo Violi, a rarity since Nick’s relocation to Venezuela.
His other failings aside, few could accuse Violi of cowardice. It must have taken significant internal fortitude for him, at such a heated, vulnerable time, to willingly return to the Arcuri home.
For this final sit-down, Nick and Violi arrived separately. With the Reggio wiretaps now removed, such private moments were once again closely guarded secrets. As such, it is impossible to say how sincere either was in proffering peace. Violi brought no offer of abdication; Nick, no sign of submission. Neither apparently was conciliatory. Perhaps Nick wished to formally deliver to Violi—faccia-a-faccia—something of an ultimatum. For his part, Violi likely wanted to show he was unmoved, unafraid and unprepared to waver from his position that he was the rightful heir to the Montreal decina. Whatever was said between the two men that day did not erase their disagreement or ease its tensions. They had, in the parlance of the modern divorce court, irreconcilable differences.
“The meeting held in Montreal did nothing to stem violence,” an FBI briefing paper noted.
MONTREAL, LATE JANUARY 1978
Police realized something was amiss when the tone and tenor of underworld talk about Paolo Violi slipped from derisive to malevolent. Within the inn
er circle of the Sicilian coterie, thoughts were shifting from merely wishing calamity upon him to actively plotting it. Police were hearing rumors from street sources and wiretaps that Violi’s position was precarious.
If the plot against Violi was obvious to investigators, Violi himself surely knew of it. In fact, police tried to discuss it with him, but he rebuffed them, just as he had refused the Quebec crime inquiry. Violi was not one to run, nor to seek the aid of the state, even if it was his best—or only—chance of survival. When word reached Montreal police that several Rizzuto men were plotting Violi’s murder, surveillance officers started keeping a close eye on the suspects. Much of their time was spent watching the comings and goings at Mike’s Submarines in Saint-Léonard. After weeks of police surveillance, often late into the night, nothing happened.
On Friday, January 20, 1978, the police surveillance teams were called off for the weekend, an officer involved in the surveillance said. It was about money. The overtime bills were getting too high and the officers had gotten nowhere in their search for information that might result in the laying of charges, he said. The anniversary of Francesco Violi’s murder was 19 days away. The second anniversary of Sciarra’s murder was six days after that. Thoughts of mortality must have been on Violi’s mind.
