The Sixth Family by Lee Lamothe

dairy products. In support of his claim, he presented a letter from the owner of the Saputo cheese company of Montreal, which offered him a partnership in the company, with one-third of its shares. (Such an offer was startling. Had Bonanno secured his immigration status and a piece of the Saputo cheese and dairy empire, it would have been a lucrative move. Saputo & Sons has gone on to become an international corporate juggernaut. Saputo is one of the largest dairy and cheese producers in North America, with 45 plants and 8,500 employees in the United States, Canada and Argentina that generated revenues of $1.03 billion in the 2005 fiscal year. The company founder, Giuseppe Saputo, later said he was unaware of any mob connections of Joe Bonanno’s at the time.)

    Cotroni and Violi had built up substantial good will within the Bonanno hierarchy in New York, both institutionally and personally, through such ventures. They were connections both sides would remember and seek to profit from. A decade after Rastelli’s return to New York from Canada, when he was named Bonanno underboss, Violi would not be shy in trying to cash in on the favor. Rastelli, likewise, reached out to Violi when he needed work done north of the U.S. border. In April 1971, soon after Evola and Rastelli’s installation as the new Bonanno Family administration, Montreal police began intercepting telephone calls between Violi and Rastelli. On May 14, 1971, Rastelli called Violi directly, asking him to help “deal” with someone in Toronto who owed him a significant amount of money. On January 21, 1973, Joseph Napolitano, from Pointe-Claire, Quebec, met with Violi at the Reggio Bar and passed on a request from New York for him to find and return a recalcitrant debtor who had fled to Canada from New York, where he owed $30,000, some of it to Evola. Violi, not missing an opportunity to curry favor with the boss, promised he would handle the matter personally.

    Violi helped New York where he could. Such requests were an affirmation of his authority in Montreal, and he basked in the recognition. All the while, he used the contact to continually push his concerns over the growing impertinence of Nick Rizzuto. Violi showed he was as intent on countering Nick’s challenge as Nick was on pressing it. A colossal showdown seemed inevitable. If the Rizzutos could triumph, it would be a crucial step in their personal and organizational history.

    It would decide what the family was to be—a support player in an American Mafia group glued to its own narrow city turf, or a leading player in a global underworld enterprise. But first, they had to survive.

CHAPTER 8

CATANIA, SICILY, 1972

    On the eastern edge of Sicily, hugging the Ionian coast, the island’s second-largest city, Catania, bustles in the shadow of Mount Etna, the highest and most active volcano in Europe. Many visitors are drawn to the city for its baroque architecture, blackened by the volcanic dust, and ancient Roman relics, some of them encrusted in lava from Etna’s periodic eruptions. For Paolo Violi, who was on something of a pilgrimage to his native country, Catania’s antiquities held little interest. It was people he was interested in—or rather, one person. Before Violi indulged himself with a trip to his native Calabria, he had serious business to attend to in Sicily.

    In Catania, a city close to the narrow straits that separate Sicily from Calabria, Violi had sought out Antonino Calderone, a mafioso who was the boss in the port city before he went on to become an informant. He granted Violi an audience, and the Montrealer inquired about other Men of Honor. Whether Violi was seeking to build new international enterprises of his own, to compete with those of his rival, Nick Rizzuto, or, as was later suggested by Calderone, trying to reconnect with Mafia traditions, the quest drew derision.

    “Paolo Violi, the well-known Canadian mafioso and a native of Calabria, arrived in Catania,”