The Tall Guy
He was a regular habituate of his cousin Baldassare Amato's deli run by his family located at Second Avenue and Eighty-fourth Street in Yorkville, New York. The deli had burned down not long before January 1984 but in its place the Amato family built an apartment building with a sleek Italian cafe and restaurant called Biffi. Bonventre's moniker was "The Tall Guy" because he stood close to tall. Lean and handsome, Bonventre frequented clubs such as "The Toyland Social Club" and the Knickerbocker Avenue area with other Sicilian mobsters. In the book "King of the Godfathers", Anthony M. Destefano writes that there was something about Bonventre that made him stand out from the other ethnic Italians. His stylish clothing, aviator sunglasses and European man purses embodied Italian couture. Bonventre normally wore his shirt unbuttoned with a gold crucifix hanging from his neck.