In the Godfather Garden: The Long Life and Times of Richie "the Boot" Boiardo

Chapter 4. Fortunate Son

57 2 Tony Boy Boiardo was baptized Ruggiero Anthony Boiardo; so that he wouldn’t be confused with his father, he went by his middle name. His friends and associates took to calling him Tony Boy and “the kid,” and throughout his life he lived up to the child-like monikers.He seemed always smiling and youthful, even in middle age. The New York Times described him as “a jolly, round-faced businessman in a rush to make money.”1 Because he was the only son in an Italian family, it was not unusual that Tony Boy would continue in the family tradition, though it is not clear that the Boot intentionally groomed him to be the heir apparent. The Boot was a disciplinarian and wanted his son to get the education that he himself was denied as a young man. Once, in a fit of anger over Tony Boy’s poor school grades, the Boot chained him to a post in the basement and left him there in the darkness for hours, according to his sister Rose. Jennie, his mother, heard his cries and sent his older sister, Agnes, to comfort him.2 Jennie apparently knew better than to intercede directly herself. c h a p t e r 4 FORTUNATE SON All things that lie beneath the moon, great wealth and earthly kingdoms—all have been assigned to Fortune’s will. Brusquely she locks and unlocks door, and when she seems most white, turns dark, but war is where she seems the most unstable, changing, hazardous. Nothing else is as fraudulent. —Matteo Maria Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato, 140 58 In the Godfather Garden The Boot could be especially hard on Tony Boy’s mother, who took to drinking as an escape. During a heated argument with Jennie over his womanizing, she pulled out a gun and aimed it at him; the Boot picked up their seven-year-old daughter Rose and used her as a shield. Tony Boy was very close to his mother and was protective of her. Later, after his mother died, he disapproved of his father’s many girlfriends. Tony Boy and his sisters were well aware of what their father was capable ; as they grew up on Nassau Street and later on Newark Street, they were exposed to guns in the house, the Boot’s mysterious associates, and his trips to court and prison. Tony Boy was a child when the Boot was convicted of manslaughter; he visited the Boot in his hospital bed, at Trenton State Prison, and at the Crosswicks penal farm. He was just fourteen years old when he witnessed his first murder.3 Despite the Boot’s pressure, Tony Boy’s education was sketchy. In the middle of his freshman year at Newark’s public Barringer High School he transferred to Seton Hall, a prep school, where he lasted only one semester. He transferred to Essex County Vocational School for a year and then back to Barringer, where he finally called it quits, dropping out in 1932 at the age of eighteen.4 In 1937 the Boot opened the Vittorio Castle Restaurant in partnership with Henry Abrams, alias Kid Henry, a former pugilist and convicted burglar . The partners signed over the restaurant to Tony Boy in order to obtain a liquor license, which the Boot and Abrams couldn’t hold because of their criminal records, and Tony Boy was put in charge as host and manager. The Castle was well-named; the exterior was an undulating flow of towers and sturdy Flemish bond brickwork, tall arch windows, and a canopied turret entrance, like a medieval citadel. It commanded a busy corner of Summer Avenue and Eighth Avenue, the main thoroughfare in the First Ward. The dining room was a banquet hall that could seat a few hundred people; colorful frescoes, gilded sconces, and mirrors adorned the walls, and faux goldleaf chandeliers hung from a twenty-foot ceiling.“The Vittorio Castle, built after Prohibition, was one of the most notorious nightspots in North Jersey, operating 24 hours a day, unmolested by authorities.”5 Fortunate Son 59 The Boot, already well into his Orlando Innamorato period, which would last to the end of his life, held court in the Castle, entertaining politicians , gangsters, and celebrities, who came from New York City once they discovered the charms of Newark’s own Little Italy.6 In 1939, at his table in the Castle...