Business or Blood Page 4

  Twenty-three-year-old Alfonso Caruana chauffeured Buscetta around Montreal during those three months, as the visitor met with Nicolò Rizzuto, Pasquale Cuntrera and other local Mafiosi. Buscetta picked up on tensions between Paolo Violi and Nicolò. Violi struck Buscetta as a jealous man. Relationships were complex and sometimes crossed ethnic lines. He noted, for instance, that the Calabrian Violi was a close associate of the Sicilian Leonardo Caruana (in 1981, Caruana would be deported from Canada and murdered in front of his Palermo home, on the day of his son’s wedding, in a gesture of operatic cruelty), and although Nicolò wasn’t a member of the Siculiana crime family, he did work closely with them.

  Despite his standing in the Sicilian Mafia, Buscetta—in the guise of Manuel Lopez Cadena—remained under the radar of Canadian police until long after his departure from Montreal. He later recalled an odd incident that occurred toward the end of that visit. He was standing outside his Montreal motel when police moved in and blocked his exit. He must have feared that his cover had been blown. Then police began grilling him about a bank robbery. Unbeknownst to Buscetta, he had been standing near a bank-robbery team’s getaway car, and police mistakenly thought he was part of the gang. Once they were convinced he was innocent of that crime, he was freed to go and made his way to Pasquale Cuntrera’s home for Christmas dinner.

  A few days after Christmas, Buscetta left Montreal. He was reunited with his friend Nicolò in Caracas in 1972. Buscetta was in South America on his honeymoon with what was believed to be his third wife. Nicolò told Buscetta that he had left Montreal for a far less happy reason. He had been “called for an appointment” of the Montreal décina, a branch of the Bonanno crime family, headed by Vic Cotroni and Paolo Violi. Nicolò was certain he knew the agenda for the meeting: he was to be murdered.

  CHAPTER 4

  Going to war

  The murder of Nick Jr. got people talking again about Nicolò’s private war two generations earlier with Paolo Violi. Nicolò and Violi had been rivals in the old décina of Vic (The Egg) Cotroni, back when Vic the Egg was the Canadian branch plant manager for the Bonanno family of New York. Nicolò could barely stomach being under Vic Cotroni in the Montreal mob pecking order, and when Cotroni promoted his fellow Calabrian Violi above Rizzuto, Nicolò responded with a haughty grandeur. The prospect of being under two Calabrians was too much to countenance. He didn’t just disobey Violi; he refused even to acknowledge his existence. Tensions were so high between Paolo Violi and Nicolò that Giuseppe Settecasi, head of the Agrigento crime family, travelled to Montreal in 1972 to mediate, with no success.

  Later that year, when Violi could stand Nicolò’s insolence no longer, he asked the Bonannos for permission to kill him. The Bonannos initially balked, then relented. Wise to the conversation happening behind his back, Nicolò slipped away to Venezuela, where he could bide his time and extend his contacts.

  Like many bitter enemies, Nicolò and Violi had much in common. Violi had also married into power. His father-in-law was Giacomo (Jack) Luppino of Hamilton, an ’Ndrangheta boss and lieutenant of Stefano (The Undertaker) Magaddino of Buffalo. Luppino was said to carry the leathery ear of a rival in his wallet, like a treasure that could never be deposited in a bank. In November 1967, police listened in on Luppino through microphones hidden among his tomato plants and elsewhere around his red brick house on Ottawa Street North in east end Hamilton. They heard him explain how horrible things should be done to a man who was disloyal to his wife. Paolo Violi shared his father-in-law’s rigid sense of morality. That kind of talk was never heard from Vito or his father when police listened in on their conversations, even though Nicolò was of a similar if less punishing mind about marital infidelity.

  Police also overheard Luppino talking about a wedding in New York at which he’d crossed paths with his boss, Stefano Magaddino. The highlight of Luppino’s evening came when Magaddino deigned to spend twenty minutes with him.

  Magaddino was in an angry mood that evening. He complained that he had also invited Paolo Violi and Vic Cotroni to the wedding, but neither of them showed up. Violi had a credible excuse, as he explained that he was always under police surveillance and he didn’t want to bring that heat to New York. That was a permissible, even courteous response. But Cotroni? Vic the Egg had said only that he was too busy, as he had matters before the court. Such insolence rendered Magaddino livid, or, in the words of Luppino, he “turned mad like a beast.”

  Magaddino said Violi and Cotroni had a choice: they could side with his cousin Giuseppe (Joe) Bonanno of New York City or with himself. They couldn’t be loyal to both. Bonanno and Magaddino might be related, but they couldn’t stand each other. Magaddino’s anger peaked as he told Luppino about a November 1966 meeting in Montreal between Bonanno’s son Salvatore (Bill) and Cotroni. Cotroni didn’t bother to tell Magaddino before attending the meeting, which also included half a dozen men from the New York Mafia. Magaddino heard that Bill Bonanno told Cotroni at the meeting that Montreal belonged to his father, Joe Bonanno. Vic the Egg’s response? He just sheepishly listened to Bonanno’s arrogance.

  It was bad enough that Bonanno would say something so stupid, but for Cotroni to say nothing in Magaddino’s defence was unacceptable. How could Magaddino remain calm when he heard of such a slur? And why hadn’t Cotroni told him beforehand about the meeting? Had Bonanno and the visiting New Yorkers not been arrested shortly afterwards, Magaddino could have started a small war over the slight. In Don Stefano’s eyes, Montreal was his territory and Cotroni commited nothing less than an act of treason by meeting with the Americans there without his permission. How he came to the conclusion that Quebec was his turf was anyone’s guess, but he considered this to be an absolute truth. And in his mind, he must know anything of significance that happened there. As Luppino recalled his words: “I don’t care what others do, all I want to know is what is done in my house.”

  To rectify the damage Cotroni had done, Magaddino wanted Luppino to move to Montreal to assert control on the Buffalo boss’s behalf. However, Luppino preferred life in Hamilton, amidst his tomato plants. Ambitious people had a way of getting shot in Montreal, and Luppino had a good life in the Ontario steel town, with his family, his respect and his tomatoes. As Luppino put his refusal, “Stefano Magaddino is the biggest man in the world, but not even he can lead me by the arm and tell me what to do.”

  Nicolò realized that his rival Paolo Violi had connections to more than just Luppino and Magaddino. Violi’s reach also stretched back to the emerging ’Ndrangheta in his native Calabria, including the heroin and cocaine trafficker Saverio (The Playboy) Mammoliti of Castellace di Oppido Mamertina in the province of Reggio Calabria, the ’Ndrangheta heartland. Mammoliti was best known for his role in the 1973 kidnapping of sixteen-year-old John Paul Getty III, bohemian grandson of oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty, the world’s richest man. Even the mobsters must have been startled by the coldness of Getty Sr.’s initial response, when he refused to cough up a cent: “If I pay one penny now, I’ll have fourteen kidnapped grandchildren.” Eventually, the old man grudgingly agreed to a payment. Some of the estimated $2.2 million in ransom money, paid after the youth’s ear was hacked off, was tracked down by police in an investigation that led them to Montreal streets.

  Paolo Violi cultivated the image of an old-school boss, the kind of mobster who stayed out of the nasty emerging business of drugs. Word on the street suggested he was actually elbow deep in it. When two American undercover drug agents of Italian descent told Mammoliti in 1973 they wanted to make a major drug deal, they were instructed that if they wanted heroin, they needed to get in touch with “his friend Paolo Violi” in Canada.

  After Nicolò moved to Venezuela at the end of 1972 (alternately reported as early 1973), he settled into the drug trafficking business with the Cuntrera–Caruanas. His old associates had worked their way into the country’s economic and political life, to the point that American Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence noted that president Carl
os Andrés Pérez attended the wedding of a Cuntrera–Caruana clan member.

  It wasn’t the product but the profit that mattered, and they also smuggled powdered milk into Venezuela. Importing powdered milk was illegal and profitable, and they seized the opportunity to make extra money. Tommaso Buscetta also spent much time with Nicolò in Venezuela throughout the 1970s. Police believed the pair were involved together in a business called Brasil Italian Import, which was a front for narcotics trafficking.

  Perhaps Nicolò’s most lucrative business at the time was a cattle breeding ranch called Granaderia Rio Zapa in the Venezuelan state of Barinas, near the Colombian border. His partners there included Salvatore (Cicchiteddu) Greco, head of the Commission of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and a close associate of senior members of the Gambino crime family of New York City. Conveniently—especially for a cattle ranch—Granaderia Rio Zapa had its own private airstrip.

  It was in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1977 that Gennaro Scaletta of Montreal first met with the Rizzuto clan: Nicolò, Libertina, Maria, Vito and Giovanna and their children Nick Jr., Libertina (Bettina) and Leonardo, who looked remarkably like a young Vito. There was also Vito’s brother-in-law/cousin Paolo Renda, who was also Nick Jr.’s godfather. It seemed to Scaletta that everyone in this one bar was from Italy. Soon, he was associating with transplanted Mafia clans from all over Italy without leaving Caracas.

  Scaletta said that Nicolò kept his family in Venezuela for six months and a day at a time, which he thought was just long enough to exclude him from having to pay taxes to Canada for the money he earned outside the country. In South America, Scaletta learned quickly that power and influence in the Rizzuto family wasn’t always in the hands of the obvious person.

  “The Rizzutos were under Cuntrera and Caruana at that time,” Scaletta later said. “They were like actors in the sense that everyone should know what they were, they advertise … and at that time to be part of the Mafia was something important … they showed off their affiliation with the Mafia.” The person who seemed to impress Scaletta the most was the matriarch, Libertina. “Who commanded more in the Rizzuto family was the wife [Libertina] … because she was the daughter of a mafioso, a Mafia boss, in the town of origin, which is Cattolica Eraclea. The wife’s name is Manno. Her father was the Mafia boss in that area, all the people from Cattolica who went to Canada were funded by Manno. He advanced money for the airfare, airline tickets.…

  “Then I gradually discovered that almost everyone trafficked in drugs, with the difference that the Rizzutos moved out money from Canada in the suitcases.… The laundered money returned to Canada because Nicolò had a fake document from the Venezuelan Ministry of Finance showing that he had earned the money honestly, and they returned [the money] to Canada.… Once I carried in a suitcase $300,000.… The Rizzutos told me that I had to bring this money into Canada, but I did not know if it was legal or not.”

  The Rizzutos also had the ability to obtain documents from Aruba that stated their money had been legally won in a casino there. Aruba was a popular spot for the Mafia, as it was close to the northern shores of Colombia and Venezuela. It also attracted thousands of tourists, which made it easy to get lost in the crowds and profitable to set up businesses such as hotels and casinos to grab the money visitors were all too happy to throw away.

  The slaying of Nick Jr. was Canada’s most audacious Mafia murder in a generation. Montrealers expected mobsters to be murdered, and so there was seldom real shock when the guns came out. The last time a gangland hit had generated such attention from the public or within the milieu was on January 22, 1978, the evening one of Nicolò’s men put a shotgun to the back of Paolo Violi’s head. That murder came at 7:32 p.m., a time marked with a floral tribute at Violi’s funeral. That pull of the trigger, as Violi sat playing cards with supposed friends at the Reggio Bar at 5880 Jean-in Saint-Léonard, marked the culmination of the Violis’ feud with Nicolò and the beginning of the Rizzuto family’s era at the top level of Canadian organized crime.

  Violi had been cautioned by police well in advance that his life was in danger. Neither Nicolò nor Vito had been in Canada when it happened, but they were still central players in the crime. They also were out of the country when someone turned a shotgun on Violi’s consigliere Pietro (Zio Petrino, “Uncle Pete”) Sciara, as he walked with his wife from a Montreal theatre playing The Godfather in Italian on Valentine’s Day 1976. The Rizzutos were still in Venezuela a year later when Violi’s brother Francesco was shot dead in the office of his Montreal import-export business.

  The last gasp of the war between the Rizzutos and the Violis came in 1980, with the sniper slaying of Rocco Violi as he sat at the kitchen table of his home on Houel Street in Saint-Léonard. Authorities speculated that the assassin was perched on the roof of a nearby building, waiting for a clear shot with his .308 rifle. There had been some twenty murders to that point in the one-sided Mafia war, but no one considered Rocco Violi a mobster. His murder resulted from an abundance of caution by Nicolò. Ever the one for tidiness, Nicolò wasn’t taking the chance that Rocco might pursue a vendetta to avenge his two murdered brothers. There was no way of knowing then that the final hit that brought the Rizzutos to power would come back to haunt them when they fell from grace three decades later.

  With his figurative housecleaning finished in preparation for his return to Montreal, Nicolò commissioned an actual house, a custom-built mansion on Antoine-Berthelet Avenue in the Ahuntsic–Cartierville borough, on a tiny cul-de-sac alongside new homes for Vito and other trusted relatives. Their previous Montreal home had been one in a string of cramped semis on Des Vannes Street, Saint-Léonard, near Jean-Talon East and Lacordaire Boulevard. Now, on Antoine-Berthelet, only families who were close to the Rizzutos would live close to the Rizzutos. Vito lived two doors down from Nicolò, with his house registered in the name of his wife, Giovanna Cammalleri. Between the father and son was the home of Vito’s sister, Maria, and her husband, Paolo Renda. Soon the little street was called “Mafia Row” by everyone but its residents.

  During the summer of 1982, Nicolò, who was still living in Venezuela, was visiting Milan on a business trip with Giuseppe Bono. Bono was boss of the Bolognetta family near Palermo, but lived in New York City at the time. The Rizzutos were setting up their new homes on Antoine-Berthelet, and Nicolò arranged for the shipment of two or three containers of furniture from Italy to Montreal. When the containers landed in North America, initially in New Jersey, a drug detection dog reacted as if there were drugs inside. Police searched the containers but couldn’t find the suspected stash.

  In 1984, Nicolò left Venezuela and the family’s transition back to Montreal was complete. Trusted associate Raynald Desjardins settled into a luxury home in nearby Rivière des Prairies. Desjardins and Mafia Row residents such as Vito and Nicolò didn’t bother to erect fences with security gates. They knew that no one would dare take the short walk from the street to their front doors to attack them.

  For a quarter century, that confidence seemed enough to keep them safe. The slaying of Nick Jr. changed that. Who might come knocking now was anyone’s guess.

  CHAPTER 5

  Invisible enemy

  The hundreds of mourners who filed into Notre-Dame-de-la-Défense church at Henri-Julien Avenue and Dante Street on the morning of Nick Rizzuto Jr.’s funeral passed by a statue that commemorates “victims of all wars” and under a fresco of Il Duce, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, surrounded by fascist dignitaries, saints and angels. It seemed that anyone who was anyone in the Montreal mob was buried out of that ninety-year-old church in Little Italy, beneath the image of a dictator hell-bent on destroying the Mafia tradition. Even the services for the Rizzutos’ avowed enemies and victims, the Violi brothers, were held under that idealized portrayal of Italian power from a generation before.

  Nick Jr.’s widow and two children sat in the front pews, along with his mother and surviving siblings, Bettina and Leonardo. Nicolò and Libertina sat with their
daughter, Maria Rizzuto Renda, and the family’s lawyer, Loris Cavaliere. Nicolò’s parole conditions were relaxed for the funeral of his namesake grandson; for this day he would not be forbidden from associating with known criminals. Pews filled quickly and many mourners stood in the aisles. Muscular men in trench coats and black gloves acted as security guards, briskly escorting two outsiders from the church. Police filmed those who came and left while hundreds of others took in the spectacle from the sidewalk. The most notable mourner on the day that Nick Jr. was laid to rest in his gold-coloured casket was the one who didn’t attend: his father.

  The service was said in Italian, and when it was over, police and mobsters retired to their respective quarters to hone their theories about who was behind the first killing of a Montreal Rizzuto during their entire thirty years in power. Then it would be a race to see who could get to the suspected killers first—for an arrest or another funeral.

  Not so long ago, a leaf couldn’t rustle in the milieu without Vito knowing about it. Now his people were scrambling for any particle of information that might give them a clue to solving his son’s death. There was precious little real information to glean from press reports: the killing was precise, as the assassin apparently waited near Nick Jr.’s Mercedes for him to emerge from a building. Witnesses reported a volley of four shots, like fireworks, a pause, and then the final two. Next came the sound of screeching tires, and the killer was gone. The murder weapon was discovered near the scene of the crime. The handgun didn’t yield any clues, but none were expected from it. The fact that a black man was seen running away from Nick Jr.’s body didn’t mean much, even if he was the killer. Almost all crime groups contracted their killings. The key was to learn who had ordered the hit, not who carried it out.