At two hours after midnight appeared the land at a distance of two leagues.
Christopher Columbus
Journal of the First Voyage,
October 12, 1492
"You gotta try the sfogliatelli," said Frank Bellarosa.
Susan took the pastry and put it on her plate beside two other 'gotta try' pastries. Oddly, this woman, who looks like a poster girl for famine relief, packed down an entire 'gotta try' meal without even turning green. Anna Bellarosa was watching her weight, as she announced about six times, and was 'just picking'. She picked her way through enough food to feed the slums of Calcutta for a week. She also picked out two pastries, then put artificial sweetener in her coffee.
Where this was taking place was Giulio's, and it was now mid-September. Actually, it was Friday, September seventeenth, to be exact, and you'll see shortly why the day sticks out in my mind.
As for the great unveiling, I understand everyone loved the painting, and everyone had a good time that night. Terrific. I had a good excuse for missing the art event of the year, of course, if I had wanted an excuse: "Sorry, but I was busy sinking my boat to piss off the Feds." Regarding that, I hadn't heard from the IRS yet, and I doubt they even knew the Paumanok was gone. It didn't mean as much to them as it did to me. Maybe in the end, it was a futile gesture, but I wasn't sorry I'd done it. And if they asked me about it, I'd say, "Yes, I sunk her, just as my ancestors dumped tea into Boston Harbor. Give me liberty or give me death." I'd probably get about a year and a six-figure fine. But I did have a closing date on the East Hampton house, and I'd probably be able to settle my tax delinquency within a few weeks. Then I could get out my scuba gear and remove the tax-seizure signs from the Paumanok. Regarding my marital status, I'd accepted Susan's suggestion and remained in residence. However, we were married in name only, as they used to say when describing a couple who shared the same house and attended social and family functions together, but who no longer engaged in conjugal sex. This may have been all right for our ancestors, but to most modern couples, it's the worst of both worlds.
Anyway, back at Giulio's, the fat lady was still singing, belting them out in Italian, a mixture of sweet melodic songs and sad songs that made the old goombahs weepy, plus a few numbers that must have been pretty raunchy judging by the way she sang them and the reaction of the crowd.
The crowd, incidentally, was slightly different from the lunch group. There were, to be sure, a few suspected mafioso types, but there were also some uptown Manhattanites as well, people who spent their entire urban lives trying to discover new restaurants that nobody knows about yet, except the two hundred people in the place. Well, the uptown crowd was going to have something interesting to report after this meal. Anyway, there were also a lot of greasy young Guidos in the place with their girlfriends, who looked like slim Annas, just dying to get married so they could blow up like stuffed cannelloni. And there was this old geezer with a four-day beard squeezing the whaddayacallit – the concertina – while the fat lady sang. Frank gave the old guy a twenty to play "Santa Lucia", and this must have been on the goombah hit parade because everybody joined in, including Susan, who somehow knew all the words in Italian. Actually, it's a pretty song and I found myself humming it. Well, the place was packed and smelled like garlic and perfume, and everybody was in a very jolly mood.
Susan seemed really fascinated by Giulio's and its denizens. Her infrequent excursions into Manhattan are confined to Midtown, Broadway, and the East Side, and she probably hasn't been down in the old ethnic neighbourhoods since my company gave a party in Chinatown five years ago. But if I had thought she would enjoy something like this, I would have taken her to Little Italy, or Chinatown or Spanish Harlem or any place other than The Creek. But I didn't know. Then again, neither did she.
Well, a few events of note had transpired since the night I'd sunk the Paumanok that may be worth mentioning. Edward and Carolyn had come home from the southern climes. Edward with a deep tan, and Carolyn with a deeper understanding of the Cuban people, and also with a box of Monto Cristo number fours. So the Sutter clan was reunited for about a week before Labor Day, and we had a good time despite the fact that the Paumanok was at the bottom of the bay and the East Hampton house was sold. Incidentally, I hadn't told Susan that I'd sunk the boat and would not have mentioned it, except that when Edward and Carolyn came home, they wanted to go sailing. So I sat everyone down and said, "The government slapped a tax-seizure sign on the boat, and it looked so obscene, I took her into the middle of the bay and sunk her." I added, "I think her mast is still above water, and if it is, you can see seven signal flags that say 'Fuck you'. Well, I hope she's not a hazard to navigation, but if she is, the Coast Guard will take care of it."
There was a minute of stunned silence, then Edward said, "Good for you." Carolyn seconded that. Susan said nothing.
Anyway, we took some day trips, saw a matinee in Manhattan, swam at Fox Point, and even played golf one day at The Creek, though I had the distinct feeling some people were snubbing us. I resigned from the club the next day – not because, as Groucho Marx, a onetime Gold Coast resident, once said, "I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member" – but because if I belonged there, then I belonged there. And I didn't, so I don't. Capisce? Anyway, the day after Labor Day, Susan decided to visit her parental units in Hilton Head, leaving Carolyn, Edward, and me to finish out the last days of school vacation by ourselves. It was a nice few days, and we spent them mostly at Stanhope Hall, riding and walking the property. Carolyn got the idea to do a photographic essay of the estate, and that took two days with me supplying the history and the captions for the pictures as best I could. Carolyn is not the sentimental type, but I think she knew that might be one of the last times that such a thing would be possible. One night, Edward, Carolyn, and I camped out in the mansion with sleeping bags, and we had a picnic on the marble floor of the dining room by candlelight.
Sitting around the candles, deep into a bottle of wine, Carolyn said to me, "You've changed, Dad."
"Have I? How?"
She thought a moment, then replied, "You're more… grown-up." She smiled. I smiled in return. "And my voice is changing." I knew what she meant, of course. The last few months had been a time of challenge and change, and so I suppose it had been good for my character. Most American men of the upper middle classes never really grow up unless they are fortunate enough to go to war or go through a bankruptcy or divorce or other major adversity. So this was the summer I got hair on my balls, and it felt good and bad at the same time. I asked Edward, "Do you think your old man has changed?"
Edward, who is not usually tuned in to the subtleties of human behaviour, replied, "Yeah, I guess." He added, "Can you change back?" "No. There's no going back."
A few days after that, I rented a van and drove the kids to school. We went first to Sarah Lawrence, and Edward was nervous about starting college, but I assured him that the liberal arts curriculum he was taking was similar to the one I took at Yale, and that I slept for four years. Thus assured, he strode confidently into the formerly all-girls school, his hair combed for the first time since his baptism, and his body smelling of some awful lotion. Carolyn and I drove alone to Yale, and I always enjoy going back to my alma mater, as my college memories are good despite the turmoil of those years in the mid-sixties. Carolyn said to me on the way to New Haven, "Are you legally separated?"
"No. Your mother just went to visit her parents."
"It's sort of a trial separation?"
"No."
"Why are you sleeping in separate rooms?"
"Because we don't want to sleep in separate cities. End of conversation." So I drove her up to Yale. As a sophomore this year, Carolyn enters what we call a 'college', actually a dorm where she will spend the next three years. She is, in fact, in my old college, Jonathan Edwards. J E, as we call it, is a beautiful, old Gothic building with arches, climbing ivy, and turrets, situated around a large quadrangle. It is, in fact, the greatest place on the face of this earth, and I wished I was staying and not leaving. Anyway, I helped her unload half a vanful of clothes and electronics, which barely fit in her room. It was a nice suite like my old place down the hall, with oak panelling and a fireplace in the living room. I met her roommate, a tall, blonde young woman from Texas named Halsey, and I wondered if I shouldn't go back to Jonathan Edwards to do a little more undergraduate work. You're never too old to learn.
But I digress. Carolyn and I walked down to Liggett's Drugstore, which is sort of a tradition, and with a few hundred other Yalies and parents, we stocked up on notions and sundries. We stowed the Liggett's bags in the van, then walked the few blocks to York Street, "to the tables down at Mory's, to the place where Louie dwells." Don't ask me what that means.
Mory's is a private club, and I've kept my membership for this past quarter of a century, though I doubt if I get there once a year. But though I may have resigned from The Creek, and may eventually resign from my job and my marriage and from life in general, I will never resign from Mory's, for to do that is to sever the ties to myself, to the John Sutter whom I used to know and like. I may indeed be a poor little lamb who has lost his way, but that night I was home again.
So Carolyn and I had dinner at Mory's along with a hundred other families, many of whom I noticed were missing one or the other spouse. Carolyn is not a member of Mory's, and may never be, as she discriminates against private clubs. Nevertheless, I regaled her with Mory stories, and she sat there and smiled at me, sometimes amused, sometimes bored, and once or twice disapproving. Well, yesterday's high jinks are today's insensitive behaviour, I suppose, and maybe the reverse is also true. But it was a nice dinner, an exquisite few hours between father and daughter.
The oak tabletops at Mory's have been carved with thousands of names and initials, and though we couldn't find mine without clearing off someone else's dinner, I did produce a sharp pocketknife for Carolyn, who carved away while I went around the dining room and said hello to a few old school chums. I walked Carolyn back to Jonathan Edwards, we kissed good-bye, and I got in the van, opting for the two-hour drive back to Long Island rather than prolonging the nostalgia trip, which could easily have turned from pleasant to maudlin. Regarding my legal career, my association with Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds seemed to be rather vague, perhaps even tentative. I put myself on half salary, which is, I think, fair since I spend half the week in the Locust Valley office, albeit with my door closed and the phone turned off. But I feel a sense of responsibility to my old clients, and I'm trying to put their affairs in some semblance of order and to parcel them out to other attorneys in the firm. As for my Wall Street business, that's completely gone. My Wall Street clients would fire an attorney after two missed phone calls, so my sense of loyalty and responsibility toward the yellow-tie guys is not deep and not reciprocal. But I have to settle the question of my status with the firm and I suppose if I ever show up at the Wall Street office, I could discuss this with the senior partners.
As for the United States v. Frank Bellarosa, that seemed to be moving rather more slowly than Mr Ferragamo promised. Not only did we not have a trial date, but I hadn't had an opportunity to examine any of the five witnesses against my client. Alphonse informed me one day by phone, "We have them all in hiding under the witness protection programme. They're very frightened about testifying in open court against a Mafia chief."
"There is no Mafia."
Ha, ha, said Alphonse, and he added, "They didn't mind the grand jury, but now they're getting cold feet."
"Four Colombian drug goons and a gun moll have cold feet?" "Why not? So for that reason, Mr Sutter, I've asked for a delay in the trial date. I'll keep you informed." He added, "What's your rush? This should make you happy. Maybe the witnesses will refuse to testify."
"Maybe they were lying from the beginning," I pointed out.
"Why would they do that?"
He and I both knew why, but I wasn't allowed to bug him. "Maybe", I said, "it was a case of mistaken identity. All Italians look alike, don't they?" "Actually, they don't, Mr Sutter. I don't look anything like Frank Bellarosa, for instance. By the way, regarding mistaken identity, I discovered that you were at your country club at about one P.M. on January fourteenth, for lunch with your wife."
"So what? I said I saw Bellarosa at about nine A.M., then again at about noon." "And you went home, took care of your horse, presumably showered, changed into a suit, and were at your club at one P.M."
"They don't call me superman for nothing."
"Hmmm," said Alphonse. I mean, this guy thought he was Inspector Porfiry Petrovich, hounding poor Raskolnikov into a confession, but I found him a bore. Anyway, I was more convinced than ever that Alphonse was stalling and would continue to stall until somebody out on the street solved his problem. He didn't have long to wait.
Regarding my relationships with friends and family, that was also on hold. Part of the reason for this was that I was keeping out of touch, which is no easy thing to do these days. Try it. But I disconnected my home fax, changed my phone number to an unlisted one, and had all my mail forwarded to a P.O. box in the Locust Valley Post Office, which I never visited. Also, Ethel as gatekeeper proved to be a lot more nasty than George ever was, and nobody gets past the gate while Ethel is in the gatehouse. When she's not around, the gate is locked. Jenny Alvarez. Well, that relationship, too, is on hold, which is best for all concerned, as men and women say to each other when they get involved, panic, run, brood, call, run, and so on. But really, there was no use complicating the situation any more than it was. Actually, I didn't even know if Jenny Alvarez cared anymore, and I would have been relieved to hear that she didn't, and pretty annoyed and hurt, too. But I did watch her nearly every night on the news at eleven, and Susan asked me once if I had suddenly become a news junkie. Spouses who are carrying on often display a change in behaviour, as we know, but watching the news is not usually a tip-off. Goes to show you. But watch I did, and I hoped that one night Jenny Alvarez would just break down on the air and cry out, "John! John! I miss you!" or at least, I thought, perhaps when she was out in the field reporting, and she was turning it back to the anchorman, Jeff what's-his-name, she would say, "Back to you, John." But that never happened, at least not on the nights I was watching. Anyway, I had moved into one of the guesthouse's guest rooms, the smallest one, badly and barely furnished, where we always put people whom we don't want around for more than twenty-four hours. Susan had said to me, "I understand your reasons for not wanting us to sleep in the same bed, of course. But I'm glad you decided not to move out. I very much want you to stay." "Then I will. How much is it a night?"
"Twenty dollars would be fair for that room, but I can let you have a better room for only five dollars more."
"I'll stay in the smaller room."
Well, we're still making jokes, and that's a hopeful sign. Right? It's when it becomes really grim that it becomes insufferable. So we lived in that sort of cool limbo that husbands and wives have invented and perfected for the purpose of coexisting until the moving van arrives or until they fall into each other's arms and swear undying love forever, which in connubial terms means about thirty days.
In truth, I was angry, hurt, and vindictive every morning, but by noon I was philosophical, resigned, and willing to let fate take its course. By late evening, however, I was lonely and ready to forgive and forget, unconditionally. But then the next day, the cycle would start over again. Unfortunately, Susan called from Hilton Head about eight A.M., one morning when I was in cycle one, and I said a few things that I regretted by evening. Things like, "How's William Peckerhead of Hilton Head?"
"Settle down, John."
Or, "Did you want to speak to Zanzibar?"
"Go have your coffee and call me back."
Well, I did that night, but she wasn't in. Anyway, in the week or so since she's been back, I've been civilized.
So, there we were in Giulio's, having dinner, which was a little bizarre considering the circumstances. But my client had really insisted on this little get-together, though for what reason I couldn't guess except that he really enjoyed showing off in Little Italy where people knew who he was. Of course, that has a negative side as well, especially if you're a marked man. I mean, if there really was a contract out on this guy, any goombah in that restaurant could have gone out to make a phone call to some other goombah, and eventually the wrong goombahs would get the word, and for the price of a twenty-five-cent call, Frank the Bishop Bellarosa's whereabouts would be fixed. But I don't think that's what actually happened on the night of September seventeenth. I'm pretty sure it was Lenny who fingered his boss, as they say. But, anyway, I acquiesced to this dinner because, quite frankly, to say no to it would have been un-Machiavellian; i.e., I was still royally pissed off at old Frank and Mrs Sutter no matter how much I tried to cool down, but to show it would put them on their guard. What? Revenge? Vendetta? Had I lied to Frank and to myself? Was I still looking to get even? You bet. Though I had no idea what, if anything, I was going to do to or about these two, I wanted to keep their guards down and my options open.
So we sipped coffee and ate pastry. The normal security was in effect with Vinnie and Lenny at their favourite table near the door, while we were at Frank's favourite table in the rear corner. Frank sat in his very favourite chair, facing the front with his back to the wall.
Susan at one point in the evening had said to Frank, "That's very good of you to buy your employees dinner. Most men just send their car and driver away until they're ready to leave."
This was either the most facetious or the most naive statement I'd heard all year, and I wasn't sure which. Susan sometimes plays the naif as I mentioned, but the act was wearing a little thin.
I regarded Anna Bellarosa a moment. I hadn't spoken to her since that morning she tackled me at Alhambra. She was undoubtedly grateful to me for getting her husband sprung, but I was fairly certain that a traditional Italian woman did not telephone, write, or call on a man unless he was her father or brother. How suppressed these women were, I thought, how utterly dependent they were on their husbands for everything including their opinions and maybe even their feelings. I mean, the woman didn't even have a driver's licence. I wondered if Anna had an unmarried sister for me. Or maybe I'd ask the don for Filomena's hand. Anyway, though we seemed to be having a good time during dinner, we weren't. For one thing, Frank was going out of his way to be cool to Susan, and going out of his way to praise me as the greatest lawyer in New York. Obviously the man was trying to demonstrate that there was absolutely nothing going on between him and my wife, and at the same time trying to jolly us back together. Bellarosa was a smart guy in a lot of ways, but this wasn't one of them. Susan seemed uncomfortable with Bellarosa's obvious bad acting. She also seemed generally nervous, as you might expect.
There were times when the conversation was strained, as I suggested, and Frank just wasn't his scintillating self as he realized that the evening wasn't going as he'd planned. Anna, I think, noticed this, too, but I wondered if she was smart enough to know why. I had half a mind to announce to her, "Your husband is fucking my wife." But if she didn't believe that her husband was a Mafia boss, why would she believe that he was an adulterer? And if she did, what was she going to do about it?
Anyway, Frank paid the check with cash, and Vinnie and Lenny were already out the door. Frank said, "You all stay here and finish your coffee. I'm gonna go see about the car."
Anna stared down at the table and nodded. She knew the drill. Susan looked antsy to get moving, but like Anna she listened to Big Frank. I, on the other hand, didn't feel like sitting with the women while Mr Macho went out and secured the beachhead. So stupid John stood and said, "I'll go with you." And I did. Bellarosa and I went to the door, and I saw Vinnie standing on the sidewalk, checking out the block. Our car pulled up, a black stretch Cadillac that Frank had ordered from his limousine company for the occasion. Lenny was at the wheel. Vinnie signalled to us, and we went through the door onto the sidewalk.
It was a very pleasant evening with a touch of autumn in the air. There were people strolling on the street as there always are in Little Italy, but none of them looked suspicious. And as always, no one knew where Bellarosa would be that night except Frank himself and his wife. Not even Susan or I knew, though I had guessed, of course, that we were going to Giulio's. Vinnie and Lenny may have guessed also, though really, we could have been going to dinner at any one of about three thousand restaurants in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, or Long Island. It was only after we had gotten to Giulio's that Lenny and Vinnie knew for sure, and Vinnie was never out of our sight. Only Lenny was when he parked the car in a garage down the street. As I said, anyone inside of Giulio's could have made the phone call, but I'm pretty sure it was Lenny the Cretin who did. There were two of them, both wearing black trench coats and gloves. Where they came from exactly, I'm not sure, but they were standing on the other side of the limousine, and I had the impression they had been crouched behind it on the driver's side and had stood as Vinnie pulled on the rear passenger-side door handle, which caused the interior lights of the limo to go on. This may have been the signal, inadvertently given by Vinnie, for the two men to stand, because I seem to recall a connection between the two. Vinnie was still tugging on the door handle, which was apparently locked, and he banged on the window with his palm. "Hey, Lenny! Unlock the fucking door. Whaddaya, stupid?" It was at that moment that Vinnie looked up and saw the two men across the roof of the car, and I heard him say, "Oh, Mother of God…" I should tell you that at one point in the evening, when the two women went off to powder their noses (as Anna referred to urinating), I had said to Bellarosa, "Frank, this is not a good place to be at night."
"You don't like the music?"
"Knock it off. You know what I mean."
His reply had been, "Fuck it."
Well, I tried. I really did, because I couldn't stand by and say nothing. But Bellarosa's ego wouldn't allow him to make many changes in his lifestyle, and there was also the matter of Mr Peacock wanting to impress Mrs Sutter. Get it? Well, back to the really bad stuff. I stared at these two guys and found myself looking down the muzzles of two double-barrelled shotguns not ten feet away. Both men steadied their aim on the roof of the limo, though with shotguns at ten feet you don't have to do a lot of aiming. This all happened very quickly, of course, though neither man seemed rushed or nervous, just sort of matter-of-fact.
I said, "Frank…" and poked him.
Vinnie, of course, had gone for his gun, but the first blast caught him full in the face from about two feet away and literally blew his head off, sending pieces of it at me and Bellarosa.
Frank had turned toward the two assassins just as the first blast decapitated Vinnie. Bellarosa stepped back and held his hands out in a protective gesture, and he yelled out, "Hey, hey!"
The second man fired both barrels at once, and Frank, who had been a foot or two away from my left shoulder, caught both barrels in his chest and was actually picked up off his feet and thrown backward, crashing through the front window of Giulio's.
The man who had fired the single barrel into Vinnie's face looked at me, and I looked at the shotgun pointing at me. But I'm a civilian, and I had nothing to worry about. Right? Right? Then why was the gun pointing at me? I sort of knew that I'd see the flash of the barrel but would probably never hear the explosion. People who have had similar experiences have described it as 'like waiting for an eternity." That's exactly correct. And I even saw my life flash before my eyes.
Well, maybe the reason I'm able to tell you about this is that the guy smirked at me, and I wanted the last word so I flashed him the Italian salute. He smiled, swung the barrel of the shotgun away from me, and fired. I actually heard the buckshot fly past to my left, like buzzing bees, and I heard Bellarosa groan a few feet behind me. I looked and saw him sprawled on his back, half his body inside the restaurant and his legs dangling outside. His trousers were shredded, and I realized the last shot had peppered his legs. In fact, I saw blood running now, over his ankles and socks – he had lost his shoes at some point – and the blood was puddling on the sidewalk.
I heard a noise like another shot from the street and turned back to see that the two gunmen had gotten into the limo and the sound I'd heard was the door slamming shut. The long black car pulled away at normal speed. I noticed now that the two shotguns were lying in the street. My eyes moved downward, and I looked at Vinnie's body on the sidewalk, blood running out of his headless neck a few feet from my shoes. I stepped back.
No one on the street or sidewalk around me was screaming or running; they were all just standing very still. Of course, this sort of thing doesn't happen every night on Mott Street, but this was a savvy bunch, and no one around me was going to say later that they thought a car backfired or kids were shooting fireworks. No, everyone knew exactly what had happened, though no one saw a thing, naturally.
Inside the restaurant, however, there was a lot of screaming going on, and I could picture the scene in there with glass all over the place and Bellarosa's body sprawled across the window table, blood running onto the white tile floor. Well, there was nothing to be done out on the street, so I turned and went inside the restaurant. I should point out that from the moment I saw the two gunmen to the time I walked back into the restaurant was probably less than two minutes. Susan and Anna were still at the corner table, though like everyone else, they were standing, and Anna looked at me with wide, terrified eyes. Susan looked at me, too, then her eyes sort of focused over my shoulder as if she were looking for Bellarosa. I realized that neither of them had understood that it was Frank Bellarosa who had reentered the restaurant through the window. I turned toward the window and saw why; there was a small crowd around, of course, but also, when he'd sailed through the window, he had taken the curtain rod and the red cafe curtain with him, and the curtain was lying partially over his face and body. His arms were outstretched and his head tilted back over the edge of the table on which he was half lying. Shards of plate glass lay everywhere, on the table, on the floor, and on Frank Bellarosa.
The pandemonium in the restaurant was dying down except that I could now hear Anna's voice shrieking, "No! No! Frank! It's Frank! My God, my God!" and so forth.
As I moved toward Bellarosa's body, I glanced to my left and saw Susan standing a few feet away now, looking at Bellarosa's upside-down face. Her face was pale, but she seemed composed. Susan turned away from him, looked at me, and our eyes met. I knew I had blood or gore or some wet stuff on my clothes and even on my face, and I was pretty sure it wasn't my blood, but the remains of Vinnie's head. Susan, however, couldn't know that, yet she made no move toward me to see if I was all right.
Anna, on the other hand, broke away from some waiters and rushed toward her husband. She dropped to her knees on the glass and the blood-covered floor and took her husband's head in her hands, shrieking at the top of her lungs, then sobbing as she caressed his bloody face.
I was sort of out of it at this point, and I don't pretend that I noticed everything I'm describing at the exact time it happened, or that my impressions are as precise as they should have been. To give Susan the benefit of the doubt, for instance, she was probably in shock and that would explain her catatonic state.
Anyway, I got a grip on myself and knelt down in a tremendous pool of blood beside Anna, and I was about to comfort her and get her out of there. But then I noticed that the cafe curtain had slipped from Frank's face and that his eyes were open; not open dead, but open open. In fact, his eyes were watering and squinting in pain. I saw, too, that his chest was starting to heave. I ripped the red cafe curtain away from him and saw that though his tie, jacket, and shirt were full of holes, there was no big, gaping wound where the double-barrelled shotgun blast should have punched out his heart and lungs. I ripped his shirt open and saw, of course, a bulletproof vest with dozens of copper shots lying on the silvery-grey fabric.
I looked at Bellarosa's face and saw that his lips were moving, but more important, I saw the source of all that blood on the floor: a pellet or glass had penetrated the side of his throat, and blood was gushing from the wound under the collar and running onto the floor. The man was bleeding to death. Well, that was too bad, wasn't it? Talk about a quick and simple solution to a complex problem. On the other hand, I hadn't been paid anything he owed me yet, but I could write that off as a life experience. Frank would have wanted it that way.
Meanwhile, all these customers and waiters were standing around, and I guess there wasn't a doctor in the house, and no one understood that Bellarosa needed first aid. Anna was still weeping, still clutching her husband's head. Frank opened his eyes, and we looked at each other, and I think he smiled, but maybe not. I was certain his ribs were broken from the impact of the blasts, and I knew that if anyone moved him, his ribs would puncture his lungs. But so far, no blood was coming out of his mouth and his breathing was steady, though shallow. So what to do? You a Boy Scout or something? Well, as a matter or fact, yes. Eagle Scout, actually.
So I opened his collar and saw that the wound was probably in a carotid artery by the way it was gushing, and I felt around for the pulse below the wound and found it. I pressed my fingers on the pulse and the bleeding subsided. I then cradled the back of his neck in the crook of my arm to raise his head level with his heart so his brain could get blood, and I took a table napkin and pressed that against the wound itself. I didn't know if that was going to do the trick, but Mr Jenkins, my Troop Leader, would have been proud of my effort. I looked around and said to the crowd in general, "Please move back. Someone take his wife away. Thank you."
So there I knelt, covered with Vinnie's brains and skull as I saw now in the better light of the restaurant, and smeared with Frank Bellarosa's blood, and my fingers on the don's neck where I'd wanted them for some time, though.for different reasons. All things considered, I wasn't having one of my better evenings out.
I managed to get a look at my watch and saw it was a few minutes before midnight. I looked at Bellarosa's face and noticed that his skin was very white, which made his stubble look dark. But his breathing was still regular, and I could feel a good pulse. I also felt the puttanesca sauce rising in my stomach and up my oesophagus, but I got it down again.
I glanced back at his face and he was looking at me, although his eyes were unfocused. I said, "Hang in there, Frank. You're doing fine. You'll be okay. Just relax," and so forth. That's what you're supposed to do so they don't go into shock. Meanwhile, no one was giving me much encouragement, and my mouth was dry and my stomach was turning and my head felt light. Hang in there, Sutter. I heard a police siren and I looked out through the broken window and saw that a crowd had gathered, and apparently seeing Vinnie's headless corpse on the sidewalk, they had formed a wide semicircle around the restaurant. The siren was right outside now, and I also heard an ambulance horn. I looked back into the restaurant and discovered Susan a few tables away, sitting in a chair and watching me, her legs crossed and her arms folded across her chest as though she was angry with me for something. There were police outside now, and when I glanced up, I saw one of them on the sidewalk and heard him say, "Jesus Christ! Where's his head?" On my tie.
Two cops burst through the door, guns drawn. They took stock of the situation and holstered their pistols. I said to one of them, "This man has a severed artery, so don't tell me to move back. Get the EMS guys in here quick." And they did.
The two EMS guys listened to me for a few seconds, then took charge, getting Bellarosa into a wheeled stretcher without puncturing his lungs with his ribs, while a cop kept the pressure on his neck.
I stepped aside and let the pros handle it. Somewhere along the line, the boys in blue discovered the identity of the injured citizen – probably from one of the waiters, not from me – so it was up to them to decide whether or not they wanted to keep don Bellarosa from bleeding to death on the way to St Vincent's. Not my problem anymore.
Well, I was ready to go home now, having had enough excitement for one night, but my car was gone and my driver, Lenny the Rat, was probably on a flight to Naples by now.
Also, the detectives had arrived and they had this idea that I should go down to the station house and tell them all about it. "Tomorrow," I said. "I'm in shock." But they were positively insistent, so I worked out a deal whereby they would drive Susan back to Long Island and Anna to St Vincent's Hospital, in exchange for my going with them. You don't give nothing for nothing in this city, especially with the cops. Right, Frank?
While all this was going on, Lucio, the owner of the ill-fated establishment, had brought me a nice hot towel, and I got Vinnie off my hands and face, and Frank too. I said to Lucio, "Sorry about this," though it wasn't my fault, of course. But no one else was around to apologize for the window and the mess, and the free dinners. And I liked Lucio and his wife. But he'd make up the lost revenue now that Giulio's had joined other select dining and shooting establishments, with a Four Bullet rating.
And that reminded me of the press. They were undoubtedly on the way, and I didn't want to meet the press and be asked a lot of silly questions like, "Did you see the faces of the men who shot Frank Bellarosa?" and so forth. I might have hung around if I thought Jenny Alvarez was on the way, but it was past midnight on a Friday, and she was probably home with a good book by now. Anyway, I said to a detective type, "Get me out of here."
"Okay. Let's go."
"One minute." Still holding my towel, I went to Anna, who was standing, but was being supported by three cops. I said to her, "He's going to be all right. I promise."
She looked at me as though she didn't recognize me, and in fact, her eyes were swollen nearly shut and blinded by tears. But then she put her hand out and touched my cheek. Her voice was very small. "John… oh, John…" "I'll try to see you later at the hospital."
I moved away from Anna and walked over to where Susan was still sitting in the same chair. I said to her, "The police will take you home. I have to go with them to the station."
She nodded.
I said, "He may make it."
Again she nodded.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
I had the impression again that she was annoyed at something. I mean, this was terribly inconvenient and all. I said, "Okay. I'll see you later." "John?"
"Yes?"
"Did you save his life? Is that what you were doing there?"
"I suppose that's what I was trying to do. Yes."
"Why?"
"He owes me money."
She said, "Well, I wouldn't have done it if I were you." Interesting. I said, "I'll see you at home." I turned and walked toward the detective who was waiting for me. I heard Susan call out, "John." I turned and she smiled at me, then puckered those pouty lips in a kiss.
Madonn', she was nuts. But how sane was I to still love her? I followed the detective out onto the sidewalk where dozens of cops had cleared and barricaded a block of Mott Street. Police cars with revolving lights cast red and blue beams on the buildings, and it was a different block than it had been only a short time ago. The detective said to me, "That your wife?" "Yes."
"Nice-looking lady."
"Thank you."
We walked toward an unmarked car and he asked me, "Aren't you the lawyer?
Sutter? Bellarosa's lawyer?"
"Right."
"Maybe that's why they didn't take you out, too. They don't do lawyers."
"Lucky me."
He opened the passenger-side door for me and said, "You ruined your suit, Mr Sutter."
"It's an old one." Though the tie was new.
So I spent the next few hours at Midtown south with two detectives, describing the events that had taken about ten minutes to happen. I really was being cooperative, though as an attorney, and especially as the victim's attorney, I could have blown them off and left anytime. In fact, when they started asking questions about who I thought had done the deed, I told them to stick to factual questions. One of the detectives, however, kept asking me about Sally Da-da, and I told him to go ask Sally Da-da about Sally Da-da. But Mr Da-da was in Florida as it turned out. How convenient.
So we went round and round, and this one detective, the bad-cop half of the team, asked me, "Why'd you save his life?"
"He owes me money."
The good cop said, "He owes you his life. Collect on that."
"How's he doing?"
Good cop replied, "Still alive."
I told them the joke about the Mafia guy who tried to blow up a police car, but they seemed sort of weary and barely chuckled. I was getting very yawny myself, but they kept pressing coffee on me.
Midtown South is not an ordinary station house, but is sort of like headquarters for that part of Manhattan, and the joint was bustling with detectives on the second floor where I was. There was also a big room on the second floor where they kept mug-shot books, and I sat in there for about an hour with a detective who was passing me these books labelled "Wiseguys", which I thought was funny. Well, I looked at more Italian faces in that hour than I see in Lattingtown in ten years, but I didn't recognize any of the photos as either of the two sportsmen with the shotguns. I remembered a phrase I heard in an old gangster movie once, and I said, "Maybe they used outside talent. You know, a few boys blew in from Chicago. Check the train stations."
"Train stations?"
"Well, maybe the airports."
Anyway, we went from mug shots to a slide show of a few dozen paesanos caught by the candid camera in their natural habitats. The detective explained, "These men have never been arrested, so we don't have mug shots, but they're all wiseguys." So I looked at the slide screen until my eyes were about gone and I was yawning and my head ached. A detective said, "We really appreciate your cooperation." "No problem." But was I really going to finger the two gunmen if I saw their faces? Did I want to be a witness in a mob murder trial? No, I didn't, but I would. Beyond all the bullshit of the last several months, I was still a good citizen, and had I seen the faces of either of those two men, I would have said, "Stop! That's one of them." But so far, no one looked familiar. But then I started to see familiar faces and I blinked. The slides I was looking at now were unmistakably those shot from the DePauw residence with Alhambra in the background. It was, in fact, the Easter Sunday rotogravure, and the enlarged, grainy slides showed a lot of people in their Easter finery getting out of big black cars. I said, "Hey, I remember that day." And there was Sally Da-da with a woman who could well have been Anna's sister, and there was Fat Paulie with a woman who could have been his brother, and there were faces I recognized from Giulio's and from the Plaza Hotel, But none of those faces were the ones I had seen aiming down the barrels of those big cannons. Then the screen flashed to a night view of Alhambra, and there was wiseass John Sutter waving to the camera with pretty Susan in her red dress beside me, giving me a look of puzzled impatience. I said, "That's the guy! I'll never forget that face."
The two detectives chuckled. One of them said, "Looks like a killer."
"Beady eyes," agreed the other.
Well, the slide show ended, and to be honest, I couldn't identify the two men, but I said, "Look, I'm willing to do this all over again, but not tonight." "It's best to do it while it's still fresh in your mind, sir."
"It's too fresh. All I can see now is four black muzzles."
"We understand."
"Good. Well, good night."
But not quite. I spent another few hours with a police sketch artist, a pretty woman, which made the thing sort of tolerable. I was very tempted to describe to her the features of Alphonse Ferragamo, but cops take this sort of thing seriously, and I guess I do, too. So I tried to re-create in words what two goombahs looked like on a dimly lit street, crouched behind a car with shotguns partially blocking their faces. Linda – that was the artist's name – gave me a book of sketches of eyes and mouths and all that, and it was sort of fun, like a mix-and-match game, and we sat shoulder to shoulder hunched over the sketch pad. She wore a nice perfume, which she said was Obsession. As for me, my deodorant had quit, and the little splatters of mortality on my clothes were getting ripe. Anyway, she produced two sketches that, with some alterations, looked like the boys with the guns. But by this time, I was so punchy I literally couldn't see straight. Linda said, "You were very observant considering the circumstances. Most people blank, you know, sort of like a hysterical blindness, and they can't even tell you if the guy was black or white."
"Thank you. Did I mention that the guy on the right had a tiny zit on his jaw?" She smiled. "Is that so?" She took a fresh pad and said, "Sit still," then did a quick charcoal sketch of me, which was a little embarrassing. She ripped off the sheet and slid it across the table. I picked it up and studied it for a moment. The woman had obviously been drawing felons too long, because the guy in the sketch looked like a bad dude. I said, "I need some sleep." Well, it was approaching dawn, and again I figured I was through for the night, but who should show up at Midtown South but Mr Felix Mancuso of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I asked him, "Slumming?"
But he was in no mood for my wit. Neither was I, to tell you the truth.
I inquired, "How is my client doing?"
"Alive, but not very well, I'm afraid. Lots of blood loss, and they're talking about possible brain impairment."
I didn't reply.
Mr Mancuso and I spoke in private for ten or fifteen minutes, and I levelled with him, and he believed me that I knew absolutely nothing more than what I'd told the NYPD, and that I really hadn't been able to identify any of the mug shots or the faces on the slides. I did suggest, however, that Mr Lenny Patrelli was part of the conspiracy.
He replied, "We know that. The limo was found parked out by Newark Airport and Patrelli's body was in the trunk."
"How awful."
Mr Mancuso looked at me. "You could have been killed, you know."
"I know."
He said, "They still may decide to kill you."
"They may."
"Do you think they're nice guys because they left you alive? Are you grateful?"
"I was. But it's wearing off."
"Do you want federal protection?"
"No, I have enough problems. I really don't think I'm on the hit list."
"You weren't, but you may be now. You saw their faces."
"But that's not what we're telling the press, are we, Mr Mancuso?" "No, but the guys who did the hit know you saw them up close, Mr Sutter. They probably didn't figure you would be that close to them or to Bellarosa, and they couldn't be sure who you were. Pros don't hit people they're not told to hit or paid to hit. You could have been a cop for all they knew, or a priest in civvies. So they let you stand rather than get in trouble with the guys who ordered the job. But now we have a different situation." He looked at me closely.
I said, "I'm really not too concerned. Those guys were pros as you said, and they're from someplace else, Mr Mancuso. They're long, long gone, and I wouldn't be too surprised if they turned up in a trunk, too."
"You're a cool customer, Mr Sutter."
"No, I'm a realistic man, Mr Mancuso. Please don't try to scare me. I'm scared enough."
He nodded. "Okay." Then he made eye contact with me and said, "But I told you, didn't I? I told you no good would come of this. I told you. Correct?" "Correct. And I told you, Mr Mancuso, what Alphonse Ferragamo was up to. Didn't I? So if you want to find another accessory to this attempted murder, go talk to him."
Poor Mr Mancuso, he looked sleepy and sad and really disgusted. He said, "I hate this. This killing."
I informed Saint Felix that I didn't care much for it either. And on the subject of mortality, I also informed him, "I stink of blood. I'm leaving." "All right. I'll drive you. Where do you want to go?"
I thought a moment and replied, "Plaza Hotel."
"No, you want to go home."
Maybe he was right. "Okay. Do you mind?"
"No."
So, after some NYPD formalities, including a promise by me not to leave town, we left Midtown South and got into Mr Mancuso's government-issued vehicle and went through the Midtown Tunnel, heading east on the expressway. The sun was coming up and it was a beautiful morning.
Mr Mancuso and I must have had a simultaneous thought because he asked me, "Are you happy to be alive?"
"Absolutely."
"I'm glad to hear that."
So was I. I asked him, "How is Mrs Bellarosa?"
"She looked all right when I saw her a few hours ago." He asked me, "And Mrs Sutter? Was she very upset?"
"She seemed composed when I last saw her."
"These things sometimes have a delayed reaction. You should keep an eye on her."
I should have kept an eye on her since April, and I think that's what he meant.
"She's a strong woman."
"Good."
We made small talk as we headed into the rising sun, and to his credit, he wasn't taking the opportunity to pump me about this or that, and so I didn't bug him about Ferragamo again.
Whatever we were talking about must have been boring because I fell asleep and awoke only when he poked me as we drove up Stanhope Hall's gates, which Susan had left open. Mancuso drove up to the guesthouse and I got out of the car and mumbled my thanks to him. He said, "We'll keep an eye on the place. We're here anyway."
"Right."
"Do you want this sketch? Is this supposed to be you?"
"Keep it." I stumbled out of the car, staggered to the door, and let myself in. On the way up the stairs, I peeled off my bloody clothes and left them strewn on the steps where Lady Stanhope could deal with the mess. I arrived at the guest bathroom stark naked (except for my Yale ring) and took a shower sitting down. Madonn', what a lousy night.
I went into my little room and fell into bed. I lay there staring up at the ceiling as the morning sun came in the window. I heard Susan in the hallway, then heard her on the stairs. It sounded as if she was gathering up the clothes. A few minutes later there was a knock on my door and I said, "Come in." Susan entered, wearing a bathrobe and carrying a glass of orange juice. "Drink this," she said.
I took the orange juice and drank it, though I had a stomach full of coffee acid.
She said, "The policeman who drove me home said you were a lucky man."
"I'm definitely on a lucky streak. Tomorrow I'm going skydiving."
"Well, you know what he meant." She added, "I'm lucky to have you home."
I didn't reply, and she stood there awhile, then finally asked me, "Is he dead?"
"No. But he's critical."
She nodded.
"How do you feel about that?" I inquired.
She replied, "I don't know." She added, "Maybe you did the right thing."
"Time will tell." I informed her, "I'm tired."
"I'll let you get some sleep. Is there anything else I can get for you?"
"No, thank you."
"Sleep well." She left and closed the door behind her.
As I lay there, I had this unsettling feeling that I had done the right thing, but for the wrong reason. I mean, my instinct as a human being was to save a life. But my intellect told me that the world would be well rid of Mr Frank Bellarosa. Especially this part of the world.
But I had saved his life, and I tried to convince myself that I did it because it was the right thing to do. But really, I had done it because I wanted him to suffer, to be humiliated knowing he was the target of his own people, and to face the judgement of society, not the judgement of the scum that had no legal or moral right to end anyone's life, including the life of one of their own. Also, I wanted my piece of him.
But while I was telling myself the truth, I admitted that I still liked the guy. I mean, we had clicked right from the beginning. And if Frank Bellarosa had any conscious thoughts at that moment, he was thinking about what a good pal I was to stop him from bleeding to death. Mamma mia, we should have had pizza delivered.
Well, trying to clear your head and your conscience at the same time is pretty exhausting, so I tuned in to a fantasy about Linda the sketch artist and fell asleep.
The tough son of a bitch survived, of course, thanks mostly to my Eagle Scout and army first-aid skills. The press had made a big deal about my saving Bellarosa's life, and one of those inane inquiring-photographer pieces in a tabloid asked: Would you save the life of a dying Mafia boss? All six respondents said yes, going on about humanity and Christianity and all that. Sally Da-da might have had a slightly different opinion if asked, and I sort of suspected he was pissed off at me.
Anyway, it was mid-October now, Columbus Day to be precise, and perhaps that had something to do with my deciding to pay a call on Mr Frank Bellarosa, who had been discharged from the hospital about two weeks before and was convalescing at Alhambra.
I hadn't seen or spoken to him since our unfortunate dinner at Giulio's, and in fact, I hadn't even sent a card or flowers. Actually, he owed me flowers. But I had followed the news accounts of his medical progress and so forth. Also, Jenny Alvarez and I had been meeting in Manhattan for lunch now and then, and she gave me the latest mob gossip. The latest was this: Unlike with some failed Mafia hits where the intended victim survives and is granted a sort of stay of execution in return for acknowledging that he deserved what he almost got, the contract on Frank the Bishop Bellarosa was still in force. Ms Alvarez and I, incidentally, had progressed in our relationship toward a more spiritual and intellectual plane, which means I wasn't screwing her. Just as well. That really complicates things.
So, on that sunny, mild Columbus Day morning, I walked across the back acreage to Alhambra, where I was stopped near the Virgin Mary by two men wearing blue windbreakers on which were stencilled the letters FBI. They both carried black M-16s. I introduced myself, and they asked for identification, though they seemed to know who I was. I produced my IDs and one of them used a hand-held radio to call someone. I could hear part of the conversation, and it sounded as if the guy on the other end had to go see if Mr Bellarosa was receiving, as they say. I guess he was, because one of the FBI guys said he had to frisk me and he did. He then escorted me toward the house.
I knew, of course, that the guard had changed at Alhambra. Well, two of them were dead for one thing. But Tony and the other characters I had seen floating around all summer had disappeared, either of their own volition or by government decree. Anyway, the Feds were in charge now, and Frank, though safer, was less free, like his birds in their gilded cages. He wasn't actually under arrest; he had apparently switched sides according to the press. Hey, would you blame him? Anyway, the FBI guy with the M-16 said to me as we walked, "You understand that he has dismissed you as his attorney, and anything he says to you is not privileged information."
"I sort of figured that out." Most FBI agents are lawyers, and maybe even this guy, with his government-issued L. L. Bean look-alikes and his rifle, was an attorney. I like to see attorneys do macho things. Good for the profession's image. I asked, "Is his wife home?"
"Not today. She stays with relatives on and off."
"Is Mr Mancuso here?"
"I'm not sure."
We crossed the patio, which was covered with autumn leaves, and passed by the pizza oven, whose door was rusty. We entered the great house through the rear doors where another agent, wearing a suit, took charge and escorted me into the palm court.
The palm court was filled with bouquets and baskets of get-well flowers and smelled like a funeral home. Mamma mia, these people were into cut flowers. I peeked at a few cards, and on the biggest flower arrangement was a card that said: Frank, Welcome home. Feel better. Love, Sal and Marie. No. Could that be Sally Da-da? What was Anna's sister's name? I think it was Marie. What incredible gall.
Anyway, there were a few other federates in the palm court, and one of them ran a metal detector over me while I admired the flowers. The detector went off and the guy said, "Please" empty your pockets, sir." "It went off because I have brass balls," I informed him, but I emptied my pockets just the same. I was wearing a tweed shooting jacket, perhaps not the best choice of attire for the occasion, and sure enough, in the side pocket was a clasp knife, which was missed by the frisk search, and which I use to extract jammed shotgun shells. But I didn't mention that because these guys looked tense enough.
"May I have that, sir?"
I gave him the knife and he ran the detector over me again. While this was going on, I spotted a female nurse walking across the palm court. She was an older woman, not a hanky-panky nurse, and she looked tough, the kind who gives ice-water enemas without lubrication.
So, the gent escorted me up the stairs, but I said, "If he's in his den, I know the way."
He replied, "I have to take you all the way, sir." Good Lord, this place was getting grim.
We walked to the closed door of the den, and the agent knocked once and opened it. I walked in and the agent shut the door behind me.
Bellarosa was sitting in the easy chair where he'd sat that night we had grappa together. He was wearing a blue-striped bathrobe, and bedroom slippers, which somehow made him look older or perhaps just benign. I noticed he needed a shave. Still sitting, he extended his hand toward me and said, "I can't get up easy." I took his hand and we shook. I saw now that his usually tanned skin was sallow, and I noticed a few purplish scars on his face and neck where the buckshot had hit him. "How are you, Frank?"
"Not bad."
"You look like shit."
He laughed. "Yeah. I can't get around much. No exercise. They're still finding fucking pellets in my legs, and my chest feels like I got hit by a truck. I gotta use these canes now." He grabbed a cane by the side of the chair. "Like my grandmother." He lifted the cane. "I whack anybody who walks past." He swung the cane and tapped me playfully on the hip and laughed. "Like my old grandmother. Have a seat."
I sat in the chair opposite him.
"You want some coffee? Filomena's still here. She's the only one left. The rest are fucking Feds. Even the nurses are fucking Feds. You want coffee?" "Sure."
He picked up a walkie-talkie and bellowed, "Coffee!" He put the radio down and smiled. "I keep them all busy."
He really did look like shit, but I didn't sense any brain impairment. In fact, he seemed sharp as ever, just a bit subdued, though that might be a result of painkillers.
I asked, "How's Anna?"
"She's okay. She's with her crazy sister in Brooklyn."
"Marie? The one who's married to Sally Da-da?"
He looked at me and nodded.
I said, "You know the Feds think it was your brother-in-law."
He shrugged.
I went on, "He's in charge now. Right?"
"In charge of what?"
"The empire."
He laughed. "Empire? I don't know about no empire." "You better know, Frank, or you'll wake up one morning and nobody's going to be outside with M-16s. It'll just be you and your canes and Sally Da-da paying a call. Capisce?"
He smiled. "Listen to you. You sound like fucking Mancuso."
"The papers said you were cooperating."
He snorted. "More bullshit. More Ferragamo bullshit, trying to make me look like a rat. The prick still wants me dead."
In truth, I hadn't given much credence to the possibility that Frank Bellarosa was now working for Alphonse Ferragamo. I said, "Look, Frank, I'm not your attorney anymore according to Jack Weinstein, but if I were, I'd advise you to cooperate with the government. I assume you're at least contemplating that, or you wouldn't be surrounded by FBI."
He played with the crook of his cane for a while, and he looked like an old man, I thought. He said, "I'm being protected because I'm a witness to a killing. Vinnie's killing. Just like you. You know? And I'm the target of organized crime." He smiled.
I said, "Frank, you don't owe any loyalty to people who tried to kill you. This is your last chance to stay out of jail, to stay alive, and to go someplace with Anna and start over."
He looked at me for a full minute, then asked, "What's it to you?" Good question. I replied, "Maybe I care about Anna. Maybe I care about justice." I added, "I'm a citizen."
"Yeah? Well, let me tell you something, Mr Citizen. Frank Bellarosa doesn't talk to the Feds."
"Your own people tried to kill you, Frank." '
"That was a misunderstanding. You know how that happened. Fucking Ferragamo set me up. But I got it all straightened out now with my people." "Do you? Then go take a ride in the country with Sally Da-da."
"Hey, Counsellor, you don't know anything about this." "I know I saw the business end of two double-barrelled shotguns. I saw Vinnie's head splash open like a pumpkin, and I saw you do a backflip through the window."
He smiled. "You see why I pay my lawyers so much?" Speaking of which, I hadn't seen a nickel from him so far, but I wasn't going to bring it up. I did say, however, "I'd like you to explain to me why I was fired." He shrugged. "I don't know. Lots of reasons. What did Jack tell you?"
"Not much. He just said I caught a break and I should be thrilled. This is true. He also said he would call me as your alibi witness if you wind up standing trial for murder. That is not so thrilling."
"Yeah. Well, we'll see." He added, "The Feds don't like you. So I did them a little favour and let you go."
That's interesting. And what favour are they doing you in return?" He didn't reply, but said, "That don't mean we can't still be friends. In fact, we're better off as just friends and neighbours. Right?"
"I suppose. Am I still an honorary Italian?"
He laughed. "Sure. Hey, better yet, I'm making you an honorary Napoletano. You know why? Because you stood there and flipped that guy the bird when he was thinking about putting you away."
How in the name of God could he know that? But I knew better than to ask. Bellarosa was getting himself into a lighter mood and he said, "Hey, you still fucking that Alvarez broad or what?"
"I'm a married man."
He smiled.
I said, "She did tell me that the word on the street is that your brother-in-law still had a contract out on you. And you let your wife sleep there?" "One's got nothing to do with the other."
I guess I still didn't understand Italian family relationships. I tried to imagine a situation where Susan went to stay with relatives who were trying to kill me. Actually, something like that happens every time she goes to Hilton Head. But William Pecker head only wants me dead; he's too cheap to hire anyone to do the job. I said to Bellarosa, "Sally sent you flowers. Does he come here and visit you?"
He didn't answer the question directly, but said, "The guy's a Sicilian. The Sicilians have this expression: You hold your friends close, but your enemies closer. Capisce?"
"I do, but I think you're all nuts. I am not nuts, Frank. You are all nuts."
He shrugged.
I asked him, "Do they pay the two guys for a near miss?" He smiled. "They can keep the half they got up front. They don't get the other half." He added, "I woulda done it different."
"How so?"
He replied as though he'd thought this out. "Well, the shotguns were all right to knock people down and fuck up everybody's mind. You know? But you gotta finish the guy you're after with a bullet in the head, because lots of guys wear a vest now. Right?"
"Techniques vary, I'm sure. Hey, Frank, how come you were wearing a vest and not me?"
"I told you, you're a civilian. Don't worry about it. Hey, you want a vest? I'll give you one of mine." He laughed.
There was a knock on the door, and an FBI guy came in followed by Filomena, who was carrying a tray. I stood to help her, but she made it clear I was in her way, so I sat down. There aren't many women whose appearance would be improved by a beard, but Filomena was one of them.
She put a tray on the table and poured two cups of coffee. Frank said something to her in Italian, and she said something back to him, and they were at it again. While they argued about whatever, she fixed his coffee with cream and sugar and buttered a biscuit for him. I could tell, despite the arguing, that there was affection between the two. I said to Bellarosa, "Tell her I like her." He smiled and spoke to Filomena in Italian.
She looked at me and made a sort of grunt, then snapped something at me. Bellarosa translated, "She said you have a beautiful wife and you should behave." He added, "Italian women think when you give them a compliment, you want to fuck them. They think all men are pigs."
"They're right."
Filomena gave me a glance and left.
I had some coffee, but I noticed that Bellarosa ignored his and ignored the biscuits. I said to him, "Frank, I'm not here to do the government's work, but I have to tell you, you should put on your Machiavellian thinking cap and consider what's good for you and your wife and your sons." I added, "I tell you this because I like you."
He seemed to be actually thinking about that, then replied, "I'll tell you something, Counsellor, things are different now. Twenty years ago, nobody talked to the DA or the Feds. Now you got guys who want it both ways. They want to make the money, live the life, then they get into a little trouble with the law, and they don't want to do a little time. You know? So they sing. They don't understand that you got to be ready to do twenty years when you get into this business or you don't get into this business. But now they all have middle-class ambitions, these men. They want to sleep with their wives and girlfriends every night, see their kids off to school, play golf even. In my uncle's day, a man did his twenty years without a fucking peep, and he came out and his wife hugged him, his children kissed his hand, and his partners filled him in on the latest. Understand? But who's got that kind of balls today? So the fucking U.S. Attorney offers deals. But I don't make deals with Feds to save my own ass. My friends should've understood that. They should understand that Frank Bellarosa is not a fucking rat like half of them are. You know what I learned at La Salle? You lead by example. You don't compromise your honour. If this thing, this organization, it going to go on, then I got to show everybody how to make it go on. I got to set the example even if they tried to kill me, and even if I'm surrounded now by Feds. That's balls, Counsellor. Balls. Capisce?"
Indeed I did. Misplaced balls, but balls nonetheless."Capisco." He smiled. "Yeah. Hey, the organization may be a little fucked up these days, but you can't say they don't still have some class and style. They left you standing, didn't they?"
I replied, "They understand bad press, too. Hitting you is one thing, hitting me is another."
"Yeah. We still get good press. We want good press. We need good press. The melanzane and the Spanish shoot everybody, then they wonder why nobody likes them. Right?"
"Techniques vary, as I said."
"Yeah, but those assholes don't have any technique."
I really didn't want to debate the merits of competing criminal organizations. But Bellarosa had a point of sorts. To wit: Even if Sally Da-da wanted me dead because I annoyed him, he knew that killing me was not good press and not good business. So Gentleman John Sutter walked through blood and fire with nothing more than a ruined suit and tie, protected by an aura of perceived power and impeccable social credentials. No blue blood on the sidewalks of Little Italy. No wonder Frank didn't think I needed a bulletproof vest. Just the same, I would have preferred to be wearing one when the goombah pointed the gun at me. I regarded Bellarosa a moment. Though his face looked drawn and his frame looked somehow diminished to me, his paunch was trying to get out of his bathrobe. Truly, getting hit by three 8-gauge shotgun blasts, even when wearing a vest, was not good for one's health. Seeing him there, a physical wreck, I couldn't help but wonder if his mental state hadn't deteriorated as well. I mean, he seemed okay, but there was something different. Maybe it was the Feds in the house. That would depress anyone.
He asked me to get him a bottle of sambuca, which was hidden behind some books on a shelf, and I found it. I also saw a vase of freshly picked marigolds on the shelf, big yellow marigolds of the type George and I planted at Stanhope Hall. Interesting.
I gave him the bottle, and he poured a good shot of it into his coffee cup and drank it, then poured another. "You want some?"
"It's a little early."
"Yeah." He said, "That bitch of a nurse won't let me drink. Because of the antibiotics I'm taking. Shit, the fucking sambuca is an antibiotic. Right? Here, put this back."
I put the bottle behind the books. My, how things had changed at Alhambra. Now I was depressed. I looked at my watch as if I had to leave. He saw me and said, "Sit down a minute. I gotta tell you something." He motioned me by his side and said, "Sit here on this hassock." He jerked his thumb at the ceiling, which I took to mean the place might be bugged.
I sat on the hassock close to him.
He leaned toward me and spoke softly, "Let me give you some advice, Counsellor. I don't hear much from the outside these days, but I do hear that Ferragamo is after your ass. And he ain't doing that just to blow my alibi, he's doing it because you pissed him off in court, and because you saved my life and fucked up his whole thing. So now he's got vendetta on the brain. So watch yourself." "I know." Irony of ironies; Frank Bellarosa was being offered a deal, and I was looking at ten years for perjury. And the one man who could testify against me was Frank Bellarosa. Bellarosa understood this, of course, and I'm sure the irony wasn't lost on him. In fact, he smiled and said, "Hey, Counsellor, I won't rat you out. Even if they get me by the balls and I got to give up some people, I won't rat you out to Ferragamo."
I mean, this guy first got you into serious trouble, then got you out of it, then told you that you owed him a favour for his help, then you did him a favour that got you into more trouble, and round and round it went. Now I think he wanted me to say thank you. Speaking in the same low volume as he was, I said, "Frank, please don't do me any more favours. I can't survive many more of your favours."
He laughed, but his ribs must have been busted up pretty bad because he winced, and his face went even whiter. He swallowed the last of the sambuca, stayed motionless awhile until his breathing steadied, then sat up a bit and asked me, "How's your wife?"
"Which one?"
He smiled. "Susan. Your wife."
"Why are you asking me? She comes here."
"Yeah… but I haven't seen her in a while."
"Neither have I. She just got home yesterday."
"Yeah. She went to see the kids at school. Right?"
"That's right." She had also taken another trip to Hilton Head before that, which included a journey to Key West to see her brother, Peter, who is apparently phototropic.
Susan and I never really did have a long talk, but we had a few sentences, and I suggested that she not come here anymore. She seemed to agree, but had probably come anyway; as recently as yesterday, in fact, if those flowers were from her. It must have slipped Frank's memory.
Of course, I should have moved out, but moving out is hard to do. For one thing, I knew I was partly responsible for everything that had happened to us since April. Also, Susan was gone more than she was home, so moving out wasn't a pressing issue. And Susan and I can go weeks and weeks without speaking, and my finances, to be honest, were shaky, and bottom line, I still loved her and she loved me and she had asked me to stay.
So there I was, a lonely house husband, living in my wife's residence, nearly broke, still on the hook as a witness for a Mafia don, the possible target of a rubout, a social pariah, a captain without a boat, and an embarrassment to my law firm. The firm, incidentally, had sent me a registered letter at the Locust Valley office, which I decided to open. The letter asked me to disassociate myself from Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds, forthwith. The letter was signed by all the senior partners, active and retired, even the ones who couldn't remember their own names, let alone mine. One of the signatures was that of Joseph P. Sutter. Pop's a great kidder.
Well, screw Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds. They all needed a few whacks with a lead pipe. Meantime, they could offer me some incentives to leave. Bellarosa said, "I'm glad she's not pissed at me."
I looked at him. "Who?"
"Your wife."
"Why should she be?"
He replied, "For almost gelling her husband killed."
"Don't be silly, Frank. Why, just the other day she was saying to me, 'John, I can't wait for Frank to get better so we can all go to Giulio's again.'" He tried to keep from laughing, but he couldn't and his ribs hurt again. "Hey… cut it out… you're killing me…" I stood. "Okay, Frank, here's something that's not so funny. You know fucking well that Susan and I are barely speaking and you know fucking well why. If she wants to come here, that's her business, but I don't want you talking to me about her as if you're making polite small talk. Okay?" Bellarosa stared off into space, which I had learned was his way of showing that he wanted the subject changed. I said to him, "I have to go." I moved toward the door. "Should I tell your nurse you need to use the potty?" He ignored the taunt and said to me, "Hey, did I ever thank you for saving my life?"
"Not that I recall."
"Yeah. You know why? Because 'thank you' don't mean shit in my business. 'Thank you' is what you say to women and outsiders. What I say to you, Counsellor, is I owe you one."
"Jesus Christ, Frank, I hope you don't mean a favour." "Yeah. A favour. You don't understand favours. Favours are like money in the bank with Italians. We collect favours, trade favours, count them like assets, hold them and collect on them. I owe you a big favour. For my life." "Keep it."
"No. You gotta ask a favour."
I looked at him. This was like having an Italian genie. But you can't trust genies. I said, "If you went to trial for murder, and I asked you not to have Jack Weinstein call me as your witness, would you do that even if it meant your getting convicted for a murder you didn't commit?"
He didn't even hesitate. "You ask, you get. I owe you my life." I nodded. "Well, let me think about it. Maybe I can come up with a bigger and better favour."
"Sure. Hey, stop by again."
I opened the door, then turned back to him. "Hey, these Indians are standing on the beach, you know, and Columbus comes ashore and says to them 'Buon giorno,' and one of the Indians turns to his wife and says 'Shit, there goes the neighbourhood.'" As I closed the door behind me, I heard him laughing and coughing.
I finally decided to go to my Wall Street office to tidy up my affairs there. I sat in my office, my father's old office, and wondered how I could have wasted so many years of my life in that place. But by an act of pure will, I got down to work and did for my firm and my clients basically what I'd done in the Locust Valley office; that is, I wrote memos on each client and each case, and I parcelled everything out to specific attorneys who I thought would be best suited to each case and each client. That was more than my father had done, and more than Frederic Perkins had done before he jumped from the window down the hall.
Anyway, despite my loyalty and conscientiousness, I was as welcome at 23 Wall Street as a four-hundred-point drop in the Dow. Nevertheless, I soldiered on for over a week, speaking to no one but my secretary, Louise, who seemed annoyed at me for having left her holding the bag for the last several months, trying to answer all sorts of questions from clients and partners regarding Mr Sutter's files and cases.
Anyway, in order to put in long days in the Wall Street office, and for other reasons, I was living at the Yale Club in Manhattan. This is a very large and very comfortable establishment on Vanderbilt Avenue, and the rooms are quite nice. Breakfast and dinner aren't bad either, and the bar is friendly. There's a stock market Teletype off the cocktail lounge so you can see if you can afford the place; there's a gym with a swimming pool and squash courts, and the clientele is Yale. What more can a man ask for? One could almost stay here forever, and many members in my situation would do just that, but the club discourages overly long stays for wayward husbands, and in recent years, wayward wives. Regarding the latter, one could get into trouble at the club, but I had enough trouble, so after dinner I would just read the newspapers in the big lounge and have a cigar and port like the other old tweedbags, then go to bed. I did bring Jenny Alvarez to dinner one night, and she said, apropos of the club, "What a world you live in."
"I guess I never gave it much thought."
We chatted about the World Series, and she needled me about the Mets' pathetic four-in-a-row loss to the Yankees. Who would have believed it? Anyway, we talked about everything except Bellarosa, television news, and sex, just to show each other, I guess, that we had a solid friendship based on many mutual interests. Actually as it turned out, other than baseball, we shared almost no interests. We wound up talking about kids, and she showed me a picture of her son. And though it was obvious that we were still hot for each other, I didn't ask her up to my room.
Well, I wound up spending nearly two weeks at the Yale Club, which was convenient in regard to not having to deal with friends and family on Long Island. On the weekend, I visited Carolyn and Edward at their schools. By the middle of the following week, I had about run out of excuses for staying away from Lattingtown, so I checked out of the Yale Club and went back to Stanhope Hall to discover that Susan was about to leave for another visit to Hilton Head and Key West. You may envy people like us for the time and money we have to spend avoiding unpleasantness, and you may be right in being envious. But in my case, at least, the money was running out and so was the time, and the hurt was no less acute than if I'd been a contractor or a civil servant. Clearly, something had to be done. I said to Susan before she left, "If we move away from here, permanently, I think I can come to terms with the past. I think we can start over."
She replied, "I love you, John, but I don't want to move. And I don't think it would do any good anyway. We'll solve our problems here, or we'll separate here."
I asked her, "Are you still visiting next door?"
She nodded.
"I'd like you not to."
"I have to do this my way."
"Do what?"
She didn't reply directly, but said to me, "You visited next door. And you're not his attorney anymore. Why did you go?"
"Susan, it's not the same if I go there as when you go there. And don't piss me off by asking why it isn't."
She replied, "Well, but I will tell you that perhaps you shouldn't go there either."
"Why not? Am I complicating things?"
"Maybe. It's complex enough."
And on that note, she left for the airport.
Well, despite Susan's good advice, about a week later, on a raw, drizzly day in November, I decided to go collect the money that Bellarosa still owed me and, more important, to collect a favour. Because of the wet weather I went by way of the front gate. The three FBI men there were particularly officious, and I was briefly nostalgic for Anthony, Lenny, and Vinnie.
As I stood under the eave of the gatehouse, I could see this one FBI guy inside glancing at me through the window as he spoke to someone on the phone. Two other FBI guys stood near me with their rifles. I said to them, "Is there something wrong with my passport? Is II Duce not receiving? What's the problem here?" One of the agents shrugged. After a while, the other guy came out of the gatehouse and informed me that Mr Bellarosa was not available. I said, "My wife comes and goes here as she pleases. Now you get back on that fucking telephone and get me cleared pronto."
And he did. Though he seemed upset with me for some reason. So I was escorted up the cobble drive by one of the guys with the rifles, was turned over to another guy with a tie at the door, and got myself processed for dangerous metal objects. What they didn't understand was that if I wanted to kill Bellarosa, I would do it with my bare hands. I noticed that the flowers were all gone now and the palm court looked somehow bigger and emptier. Then I realized that all the bird cages were gone. I asked one of the FBI men about that, and he replied, "There's no one to take care of them. And they were getting on some of the guys' nerves." He smiled and added, "We only have one songbird left. He's upstairs." So I was escorted up the stairs, but this time to Bellarosa's bedroom.
It was about five P.M., but he was in bed, sitting up though not looking well. I had never been in the master bedroom of Alhambra, but I could see now that the room I was in was part of a large suite that included a sitting room off to my left and a dressing room to my front that probably included a master bath. The bedroom itself was not overly large, and the heavy, dark Mediterranean furniture and red velvets made it look smaller and somewhat depressing. There was only a single window against which the rain splattered. If I were sick, I'd rather be lying in the palm court.
Bellarosa motioned me to a chair beside the bed, the nurse's chair I suppose, but I said, "I'll stand."
"So, what can I do for you, Counsellor?"
"I'm here to collect."
"Yeah? You need that favour? Tell me what you need." "First things first. I'm also here to collect my bill. I sent you a note and an invoice over two weeks ago."
"Oh, yeah." He took a glass of red wine from the night table and sipped on it.
"Yeah… well, I'm not a free man anymore."
"Meaning what?"
"I sold myself like a whore. I do what they say now."
"Did they tell you not to pay my bill?"
"Yeah. They tell me what bills to pay. Yours ain't one of them, Counsellor.
That's your pal Ferragamo. But I'll talk to somebody higher up for you. Okay?"
"Don't bother. I'll write this one off to experience."
"You let me know." He asked, "You want some wine?" "No." I walked around the room and noticed a book on his night table. It was not Machiavelli, but a picture book of Naples.
Bellarosa said to me, "What really hurts me is that I can't take care of my people anymore. For an Italian, that's like cutting off his balls. Capisce?" "No, and I never want to capisce a damned thing again."
Bellarosa shrugged.
I said, "So you work for Alphonse Ferragamo now."
He didn't like that at all, but he said nothing.
I asked him, "Can you tell me what those bulldozers are doing at Stanhope Hall?" "Yeah. They're gonna dig foundations. Put in roads. The IRS made me sell the place to the developers."
"Is that a fact? My whole world is fucked up, and now you tell me I'm about to be surrounded by tractor sheds."
"Whaddaya mean tractor sheds? Nice houses. You'll have plenty of good neighbours."
It wasn't my property that was being subdivided or surrounded anyway, so I didn't really care. But I asked him, "What's happening to the Stanhope mansion?" "I don't know. The developer has some Japs interested in it for a kind of rest house in the country. You know? Those people get all nervous, and they need a place to rest."
This was really depressing news. A rest house for burned-out Japanese businessmen, surrounded by thirty or forty new houses on what was once a beautiful estate. I asked him, "How did you get the zoning changed?" "I got friends in high places now. Like the IRS. I told you, they want big bucks, so I get rid of everything with their help. And Ferragamo started a RICO thing against me so he's trying to get his before the fucking IRS gets theirs. They're like fucking wolves tearing me apart."
"So you're telling me you're broke?"
He shrugged. "Like I said once, Counsellor, give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. Well, Caesar is in the next fucking room, and he wants his." I smiled. "But never more than fifteen percent, Frank." He forced a smile in return. "Maybe this time he got more. But I can do all right on what's left." "That's good news." I regarded him a moment, and indeed he looked like a beaten man. No doubt he was physically not well, but in a more profound way his spirit seemed crushed and his spark was gone. I guess this was what I'd hoped to see when I saved his life, but I wasn't enjoying it. In some perverse way we can all relate to the rebel, the pirate, the outlaw. His existence is proof that this life does not squash everyone and that today's superstate cannot get us all into lockstep. But life and the state had finally caught up with the nation's biggest outlaw and laid him low. It was inevitable, really, and he had known it even as he made plans for a future that would never come. I said to him, "And Alhambra?"
"Oh, yeah, I had to sell this place, too. The Feds want this house bulldozed. What bastards. Like they don't want people saying, 'Frank Bellarosa lived there once.' Fuck them. But I worked it out with them that Dominic gets to build the house for the guy who's going to buy the land. I'm going to make Dominic put up little Alhambras, nice little stucco villas with red tile roofs." He smiled. "Funny, huh?"
"I guess. And Fox Point?"
"The Arabs got it."
"The Iranians?"
"Yeah. Fuck them. So all you bastards that didn't like me here on this street, you can all watch the sand niggers driving to their temple in their big cars, wailing all over the place." He laughed weakly and coughed. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah. Just a goddamned flu. That fucking nurse is a bitch. They fired Filomena one day without telling me and deported her or something, and they only let Anna come a few days at a time. She's in Brooklyn again. I got nobody to talk to here. Except the fucking Feds."
I nodded. The Justice Department could indeed be nasty and petty when they chose to, and when you had the IRS on your case at the same time, you might as well put your head between your legs and kiss your ass good-bye. I said, "And you let all this happen in exchange for what? For freedom?"
"Yeah. For freedom. I'm free. Everything's forgiven. But meantime I got to rat out everybody, and I got to let them play with me like I was a toy. Jesus Christ, these guys are worse than commies." He looked at me. "That was your advice, wasn't it, Counsellor? Sell out, Frank. Start a new life." I replied, "Yes, that was my advice."
"So, I took it."
"No, you made your own decision, Frank." I added, "I think the operative part – the thing that is important – is that you start a new life. I assume you'll be leaving here under the new identity programme."
"Yeah. I'm under the witness protection programme now. Next, I graduate to new identity if I'm good. In my new life I want to be a priest." He forced a tired smile and sat up straight. "Here, have some wine with me." He took a clean water tumbler from his nightstand and poured me a full glass. I took it and sipped on it. Chianti acido, fermented in storage batteries. How could a sick man drink this stuff?
He said, "I'm not supposed to tell nobody where I'm going, but I'm going back to Italy." He tapped the book on his nightstand. "Funny how we say "back", like we came from there. I'm third-generation here. Been to Italy maybe ten times in the last thirty years. But we still say "back". Do you say back to… where? England?" "No, I don't say that. Maybe sometimes I think it. But I'm here for the duration, Frank. I'm an American. And so are you. In fact, you are so fucking American you wouldn't believe it. You understand?"
He smiled. "Yeah. I know, I know. I'm not going to like living in Italy, am I?
But it's safer there, and it's better than jail and better than dead, I guess." He added, "The Feds got it all worked out with the Italian government. Maybe someday you can come visit."
I didn't reply. We were both silent awhile, and we drank our wine. Finally, Bellarosa spoke, but not really to me, I think, but to himself and maybe to his paesanos, whom he was selling out en masse. He said, "The old code of silence is dead. There're no real men left anymore, no heroes, no stand-up guys, not on either side of the law. We're all middle-class paper guys, the cops and the crooks, and we make deals when we got to, to protect our asses, our money, and our lives. We rat out everybody, and we're happy we got the chance to do it." Again I didn't reply.
He said to me, "I was in jail once, Counsellor, and it's not a place for people like us. It's for the new bad guys, the darker people, the tough guys. My people don't lay their balls on the table no more. We're like you people. We got too fucking soft."
"Well, maybe you can work that farm outside of Sorrento." He laughed. "Yeah. Farmer Frank. Fat fucking chance of that." He looked me in the eye. "Forget the word 'Sorrento'. Capisce?"
"I hear you." I added in a soft voice, "A word of advice, Frank. Don't trust the Feds to keep your forwarding address secret either. If they send you to Sorrento, don't stay too long."
He winked at me. "I was right to make you a Napoletano." "And I suppose Anna is going with you, so watch the postmarks on the letters she sends home. Especially to her sister." I asked, "She is going, right?" He hesitated a moment, then replied, "Yeah. Sure. She's my wife. What's she going to do? Go to college and work for IBM?"
"Is she as unhappy about the move as she was about moving here?" "You got to ask? She never wanted to leave her mother's house, for Christ's sake. You know, you think about them immigrant women coming here from sunny Italy with nothing and making a life here in the tenements of New York. And now those women's daughters and granddaughters have a fit when the fucking dishwasher breaks. You know? But hey, we're no better. Right?" "Right." I said, "Maybe she'll adjust better to Italy than to Lattingtown." "Nah. All Italian married women are unhappy. They are happy girls and happy widows, but they are unhappy wives. I told you, you can't make them happy, so you ignore them." He added, "Anyway, my kids are still here. Anna is going nuts about that. Maybe they'll want to come over and live. Who knows? Maybe someday I can come back. Maybe someday you'll walk into a pizza joint in Brooklyn, and I'll be behind the counter. You want that pie cut in eight or twelve slices?" "Twelve. I'm hungry." Actually I couldn't picture me in a pizza joint in Brooklyn, nor could I picture Frank Bellarosa behind the counter, and neither could Frank Bellarosa. Some of this was just an act, maybe for me, maybe for the Feds if they were listening. A guy like Bellarosa may be down for a while, but never out. As soon as he got out from under the thumb of the Justice Department, he'd be back in some shady business. If he was ever in a pizza joint, it would be to shake down the owner.
He said, "Well, you got me wondering about that favour I owe you." I put down my glass of wine and said, "Okay, Frank, I'd like you to tell my wife it's over between you two and that you're not taking her with you to Italy, which is what I think she believes, and I want you to tell her that you only used her to get to me."
We stared at each other, and he nodded. "Done."
I moved toward the door. "We won't see each other again, but you'll forgive me if I don't shake your hand."
"Sure."
I opened the door.
He called out. "John."
I don't think he'd ever called me by my first name before, and it took me surprise. I looked back at him sitting in bed. "What?"
"I'll tell her I used her if you want, but that wasn't it. You gotta know that."
"I know that."
"Okay." He said to me, "We're both on our own now, Counsellor, and in years to come we'll think of this time as a good time, a time when we took and we gave and we got smarter by knowing each other.
"Sure."
"And watch your ass. You got some of my paesanos on your case now – Alphonse and the other guy. But you can handle if I sure can."
"Yeah. Good luck."
"You, too." And I left.
I had decided to visit Emily in Galveston, and I was packing enough clothes for an extended trip. Visiting relatives is sort of like walking out but under cover. Susan had her turn at it, and now that she was back, it was my turn. I was going to take the Bronco rather than fly, because maybe the states west of New York were not just fly-over states, but places that should be seen, with people that should be met. It was a step in the right direction, anyway. I was looking forward to my first stop at a McDonald's, to staying at motels made out of concrete blocks, and to buying an RC Cola at a 7-Eleven. The thought of self-service gasoline, however, was a bit anxiety-producing, because I wasn't sure how it was done. I suppose I could watch from the side of the road and see how everyone else did it. I think you pay first, then pump. Anyway, I intended to leave in the morning at first light. It had only been a few days since my last call on Frank Bellarosa, and in that time, Susan had come home from her trip to Hilton Head and Florida looking very fit and tan. Her brother, she informed me, loved Key West and had decided to finally settle down and do something with his life.
"Like what?" I asked. "Get a haircut?"
"Don't be cynical, John."
She had greeted the news of my cross-country trip with mixed emotions. On the one hand, my absences removed a lot of strain from the situation, but she honestly seemed to miss me when we were separated. It's not easy to love two people at the same time.
Anyway, as I was packing that night, Susan came into the guest room where I was still in residence and said, "I'm going for a ride."
She was wearing riding breeches, boots, a turtleneck, and a tailored tweed jacket. She looked good, especially with her tan. I replied, "The bulldozers have changed the terrain, Susan. Be careful."
"I know. But it's bright as day tonight."
Which was true. There was a huge, orange hunter's moon rising, and it was such a beautiful, haunting sort of night that I almost offered to join her. With the two estates about to become subdivisions, and Fox Point about to become Iranian territory, and with the remaining landed gentry not speaking to us, the days of horseback riding were drawing to a close, and even I was going to miss that. But that night, I decided not to ride. I think I had sensed she wanted to be alone. She said, "I may be late."
"All right."
"If I don't see you tonight, John, please wake me before you leave."
"I will."
"Good night."
"Happy trails."
And she left. In retrospect, she had seemed perfectly normal, but I told you she was nuts, and that full moon didn't help.
At about eleven P.M., I was contemplating retiring for the night as I wanted to be up before dawn and I had a long day on the road ahead of me. But Susan still wasn't home, and you know how husbands and wives are about falling asleep before the other is home. I suppose it's partly concern and partly jealousy, but whatever it is, the person at home wants to hear the car pull up in the driveway, even if they're not speaking to the other person. In this case, I wasn't waiting for a car to pull up, of course, but for the sound of hoofbeats, which I can sometimes hear now that the stable is closer to the house. But it was a car that pulled up in front of the house, and I saw its headlights coming up the drive long before I heard the tyres on the gravel. I was in my second-floor bedroom at the time, still fully dressed, and as I came down the stairs, I heard the car door shut, then heard the doorbell ring. A strange car in the driveway at eleven P.M. and a ringing doorbell is not usually good news. I opened the door to see Mr Mancuso standing there with an odd expression on his face. "Good evening, Mr Sutter." "What's up?" was all I could think to say with my heart in my throat "Your wife -" "Where is she? Is she all right?"
"Yes. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to… she's not hurt. But I think you should come with me."
So, wearing corduroy jeans and a sweatshirt, I followed him out to his car, and we got in. We didn't speak as he made his way down the dark drive. As we went past the gatehouse, I saw Ethel Allard looking out the window, and we were close enough so that our eyes met, and I wondered if I looked as worried as she did. We swung onto Grace Lane and turned left toward Alhambra. I said to Mr Mancuso, "Is he dead?"
He glanced at me and nodded.
"I guess he wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest this time."
"No, he wasn't." He added, "Do you have a good stomach?"
"I saw a man's head blown off on a full stomach."
"That's right. Well, he's uncovered, and I guess you'll see him, because we held off on calling the police. I came and got you as a courtesy, Mr Sutter, a favour, so you can speak to your wife before the county detectives arrive." "Thank you." I added, "You didn't owe me any favours, so I guess I owe you one now."
"All right. Here's the favour. Get what's left of your life together. I'd like that."
"Done."
Mancuso seemed in no hurry, as if he were unconsciously hesitating, and it took us a while to get up the long cobble drive. I noticed, irrelevantly, that every window in Alhambra was lit. Mancuso said to me, "What a place. But like Christ said, 'What is a man profited if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'"
I didn't think St Felix understood the true nature of Frank Bellarosa. I replied, "He didn't sell his soul, Mr Mancuso. He was more in the buying business."
He glanced at me again. "I think you're right."
I said, "Is Mrs Bellarosa here?"
"No. She's in Brooklyn."
"Which was why my wife was here."
He didn't reply.
I added, "In fact, it was very convenient for Mr Bellarosa and Mrs Sutter having Mrs Bellarosa packed off to Brooklyn for extended visits." Again no reply.
I said, "You not only allowed that, you aided and abetted it." He replied this time, "That was not our business, Mr Sutter. It was your business. You knew."
"I know you have to keep your witnesses happy, Mr Mancuso, but you don't have to pimp for them."
"I understand your bitterness."
"Understand, too, Mr Mancuso, that neither you nor I are as clean and pure as we were last Easter."
"I know that." He added, "This was a very dirty case. And I can't even say that the ends justified the means. But I'll make my peace in my own way. I know you'll do the same."
"I'll give it a shot."
"Professionally, no one is very happy that Frank Bellarosa died before he could tell us everything he knew. No one is very happy with what Mrs Sutter did. So maybe we got what we deserved for what we did, for bending the rules and letting her come here and never even running a metal detector over her. We have some answering to do for this. Maybe that makes you feel better." "Not a bit."
The car stopped in front of Alhambra, and I got out quickly and went into the house. In the palm court were six FBI men, two in casual clothes with rifles slung across their backs and four in suits. They all turned and looked at me. I was approached by two of them and frisked, then got the metal detector routine that they should have given to my wife.
The first thing I noticed as I looked around was a large potted palm lying on its side near the archway that led to the dining room. The clay pot was cracked open, and soil and palm fronds were spread over the red tile floor. Partially hidden behind the big pot and the foliage was a man sprawled on the floor. I walked over to him.
Frank Bellarosa was lying on his back, his arms and legs outstretched and his striped robe thrown open, revealing his naked body. I could see the healed wounds and pockmarks where the shotgun blasts had hit his arms, neck, and legs some months before. There were three new wounds, one above his heart, one in his stomach, and one right in his groin. I wondered which shot she had fired first. There was a lot of blood, of course, all over his body and his robe, all over the floor, and even on the plant. The three wounds had partly coagulated and looked like red custard. I noticed now that there was blood splattered some distance from his body, and I realized he had fallen from the railed mezzanine above. I looked up and saw that I was standing under where his bedroom door would be.
I looked back at Bellarosa's face. His eyes were wide open, but this time there was no life or pain in them, no tears, only eternity. I kneeled down and pressed his eyelids closed, and I heard Mr Mancuso's voice behind me, "Please don't touch anything, Mr Sutter."
I stood and took a last look at Frank Bellarosa. It occurred to me that the Italians had always understood that at the core of life's problems are men with too much power, too much charisma, and too much ambition. The Italians made demigods of such men, but at the same time they hated them for these very same qualities. Thus, the killing of a Caesar, a don, a duce, was a psychologically complex undertaking, embodying both sin and salvation in the same act. Perhaps Susan, not the sort of person to think of harming anyone for any reason, had absorbed some of her lover's psyche along with his semen, and had decided to use a Bellarosa solution to solve a Bellarosa problem. But how did I know that for sure? Maybe John is projecting. Mancuso tapped my arm and drew my attention to the far side of the palm court.
Susan was sitting with her legs crossed in a wicker chair, between a pillar and a potted tree, out of the line of sight of the corpse. She was fully dressed in her riding outfit, though I did not know then nor would I ever know if she had been fully dressed earlier. Her long red hair, however, which had been tied up under her riding cap, was now loose and dishevelled. Otherwise she looked very composed. Very beautiful, actually. I walked toward her. As I got within a few feet of her, she looked up at me but made no move to meet me. I saw now that an FBI man was standing near the pillar, watching her, guarding her actually. She glanced up at him, and he nodded, and she stood and came toward me. Odd, I thought, how even the highborn learn so quickly how to become prisoners. Depressing, actually.
We stood a few feet apart, and I saw that she had been crying, but she looked all right now. Composed, as I said. I suppose our audience was waiting for us to embrace or for someone to break down or maybe go for the other's throat. I was aware that six or seven men were ready to spring into action in the event of the latter. These guys were tense, of course, having already lost one person they were supposed to be safeguarding.
Finally I said to my wife, "Are you all right?"
She nodded.
"Where did you get the gun?"
"He gave it to me."
"When? Why?"
She seemed a little out of it, which was normal under the circumstances, but she thought a moment and replied, "When he came home from the hospital. The FBI men were searching the house, and he had a gun hidden so he gave it to me to keep for him."
"I see." You blew it, Frank. But really, if it weren't a gun, it would have been a knife or a fireplace poker, or anything she could get her hands on. Hell hath no fury like a redheaded woman scorned. Believe it? I asked her, "Did you make any statement to anyone here?"
"Statement…? No… I just said… I forgot…"
"Don't say anything to them or to the police when they arrive."
"The police…?"
"Yes, they're on the way."
"Can't I go home?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Am I going to jail?"
"Yes. I'll try to get you out tomorrow on bail." Then again, maybe I won't. She nodded and smiled for the first time, a forced smile, but genuine nonetheless. She said, "You're a good lawyer."
"Right." I saw that she was pale and shaky, so I led her back to the chair. She glanced over at the mess at the far end of the palm court, then looked at me and said, "I killed him."
"Yes, I know." I sat her down in the chair, knelt, and took her hand. "Do you want something to drink?"
"No, thank you." She added, "I did this for you."
I chose to ignore that.
The county police arrived, uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives, the forensic unit, ambulance attendants, police photographers, and other assorted crime-scene types. The grandeur of Alhambra seemed more interesting to them than its dead owner, but eventually they got down to business. Susan watched the activity as though it had nothing to do with her. Neither of us spoke, but I stayed with her, kneeling beside her chair and holding her hand. I saw Mancuso speaking to a big beefy guy with a ruddy face, and they kept glancing over at Susan and me as they spoke. Finally, the big guy walked over to us and I stood. A uniformed female police officer joined him. The big guy said to me, "You're her husband?"
"And her attorney. Who are you?"'
He obviously didn't like my tone or my question, but you have to get off on the wrong foot with these guys, because that's where you're headed anyway. He said, "I'm Lieutenant Dolan, County Homicide." He turned to Susan and said, "And you are Susan Sutter?"
She nodded.
"Okay, Mrs Sutter, I'm going to read you your rights in the presence of your husband, who I understand is your attorney." Dolan had one of those little cheat cards like Mancuso had and began reading from it. Good Lord, you'd think they could remember a few simple lines after twenty years of saying them. I mean, I can still recite the entire prologue of the Canterbury Tales twenty-five years after I learned it, and that's in Middle English.
Dolan asked Susan, "Do you understand your rights?"
Again she nodded.
He looked at me. "She understands?"
"Not really," I replied, "but for the record, yes."
He turned back to Susan. "Do you want to make any statements at this time?"
"I -"
I interrupted. "No. She is obviously not going to make any statements, Lieutenant."
"Right." Dolan signalled to the uniformed policewoman, who approached, somewhat self-consciously I thought. Dolan turned back to Susan. "Please stand, Mrs Sutter."
Susan stood.
Dolan said to her, "You are under arrest for murder. Please turn around." The policewoman actually turned Susan by the shoulder and was going to cuff her hands behind her back, but I grabbed the woman's wrist. "No. In the front." I looked at Dolan. "She won't try to strangle you with the cuffs, Lieutenant." This didn't go over very well, but after a little glaring all around, Dolan said to the policewoman, "In front."
Before Susan was cuffed, I helped her off with her tweed jacket, and then the woman cuffed Susan's hands in front of her. This is more comfortable, less humiliating, and looks better because you can throw a coat over the cuffs, which I then did with Susan's jacket.
By this time, Dolan and I were getting to understand each other a little better, and we didn't like what we understood. Dolan said to the policewoman but also so I could hear, "Mrs Sutter was searched by the federal types when they grabbed her, and they tell me she has no more weapons, but you have her searched again at the station house, and you look for poison and other means of suicide, and you keep a suicide watch on her all night. I don't want to lose this one." He glanced at me, then said to the policewoman, "Okay, take her away." "Hold on," I said. "I want to speak to my client."
But Lieutenant Dolan was not going to be as cooperative as Mr Mancuso had been under similar circumstances in this very spot some months before. Lieutenant Dolan said, "If you want to talk to her, come to the station house." "I intend to speak to her now, Lieutenant." I had my hand on Susan's left arm, and the policewoman had her hand on Susan's right arm. Poor Susan. For the first time since I'd known her, she actually looked as if she wasn't in control of a situation.
Well, before the situation got out of everyone's control, Mancuso ambled over and put his arm around Dolan, leading him away. They chatted a minute, then Dolan turned back toward us and motioned to the policewoman to back off. I took Susan's cuffed hands in mine, and we looked at each other. She didn't say anything but squeezed my hands. Finally, I said, "Susan… do you understand what's happening?"
She nodded. Actually she did seem more alert now, and she looked me in the eyes.
"John, I'm so sorry for the inconvenience. I should have waited until you left." That would have been a good idea, but Susan had no intention of letting me off that easy. I said, "Maybe you shouldn't have killed him at all." Her mind was either elsewhere or she didn't want to hear that, because she said, "Could you do me a favour? Zanzibar is tethered out back. Will you ride him home? He can't stay there all night."
I replied, "I'll certainly take care of Zanzibar."
"Thank you. And you could see to Zanzibar and Yankee in the morning?"
"All right."
"Will I be home by afternoon?"
"Perhaps. If I can make bail."
"Well, my chequebook is in my desk."
I replied, "I don't think they take personal cheques, Susan. But I'll work something out."
"Thank you, John."
There really wasn't much else to say, I suppose, now that the horses were taken care of and I knew where her chequebook was. Well, maybe this wasn't the time for sarcasm, but if I told you I wasn't enjoying this at all, I'd be a liar. Still, I couldn't really enjoy it, nor for that matter could I weep over it unless I fully understood it. So, against my better judgement, I asked her, "Why did you kill him?"
She looked at me as though that were a silly question. "He destroyed us. You know that."
Okay. So leave it at that. From that we had a chance to rebuild our lives together if we chose to. She did it for us. End of story. But you can't build on lies, so I said, "Susan, don't lie to me. Did he tell you he was leaving you? Did he tell you that he was not leaving Anna for you? That he was not taking you with him to Italy? Did he tell you that he only used you to get to me?" She stared at me, through me actually, and I saw she was off again in Susan land. I supposed we could have this conversation some other time, though I was curious to discover if Bellarosa's telling Susan that he only used her to get to me was the proximate cause of his death. And you may wonder if he knew or suspected what would happen when I set that in motion. That is a complex question. I'd have to think about that.
I looked at Susan. "If you did it for us, Susan, then thank you for trying to save our marriage and our life together. But you didn't have to kill him." "Yes, I did. He was evil, John. He seduced us both. Don't take his side. He was always taking your side about something or other and now you're taking his side. Now I'm angry with you both. Men are all alike, aren't they, always sticking up for one another, but he was different from other men, and I was obsessed with him, but I tried to control myself, I really did, but I couldn't keep away from him, even after you asked me to, and he took advantage of me, and he used me, and he promised me he was going to save Stanhope Hall, but he didn't, and he used you, too, John, and you knew what was happening, so don't look at me like that."
Susan went on like this for a while, and I realized I could enter an insanity plea, but by morning she'd be herself again, which is not to say any less crazy, but at least she'd be quieter about it.
I took her head in my hands and played with her soft red hair. She stopped babbling and looked at me. Those catlike green eyes stared right into me, and with crystal-clear sanity now, she said to me, "I did this because you couldn't, John. I did this to return your honour to you. You should have done it. You were right not to let him die, but you should have killed him." Well, if we had been living in another age or another country, she would be right. But not in this age, not in this country. Though perhaps like Frank Bellarosa, and like Susan, I should have acted on my more primitive instincts, on fifty thousand years of past human experience. Instead, I rationalized, philosophized, and intellectualized when I should have listened to my emotions, which had always said to me, "He is a threat to your survival. Kill him." I looked at Susan and she said, "Kiss me," and pursed those magnificent pouty lips.
I kissed her.
She pressed her head into my chest and cried for a minute, then stepped back. "Well," she said in a crisp, cool voice, "off to jail. I want to be out tomorrow, Counsellor."
I smiled.
"Tell me you love me," she demanded.
"I love you."
"And I've always loved you, John. Forever."
"I know."
The policewoman approached and took Susan's arm gently, then led her toward the front door.
I watched until she was gone, but she never looked back at me. I was aware of a lot of quiet people around the palm court and thought it best if I left quickly so they could get back to their business.
I turned toward the rear of the house to go fetch Zanzibar as I had promised. As I walked across the court, I could hear my footsteps echoing on the tile floor, and I saw out of the corner of my eye Bellarosa's body still lying off to my left, uncovered. Frank Bellarosa was surrounded by people who found him interesting: the police photographer, two laboratory women, and the coroner. As I walked past the body, I passed something off to my right. I stopped and turned back to look at it. It was a large brass display easel that held an oil painting framed in a soft green and white lacquered frame, quite a nice frame actually. The painting was of Alhambra's ruined palm court, of course, and I studied it. It was really quite good, perhaps one of the best that I've seen of Susan's works. But what do I know about art?
I stared at the painting of the ruined palm court, the streams of sunlight coming in from the broken glass dome, the decayed stucco walls, the vines twisting around the marble pillars, and the cracked floor sprouting scraggy plant life amid the rubble. And I saw this now not as a whimsical or romantic rendition of physical decay, but as a mirrored image of a ruined and crumbling mind; not a vanished world of past glory, but a vanished world of mental and spiritual health. But what do I know about psychology? I hauled off and put my fist through the canvas, sending it and the easel sprawling across the court. No one seemed to mind.
It was January, and the days were short and cold. It was about four P.M., and already the sunlight was fading, but I didn't need or want much light. The wrought-iron gates of Alhambra had been sold by the developer and replaced with steel security gates that were fastened together with a chain but not tightly enough to prevent me from slipping through.
I walked past the gatehouse, which was now being used as the builder's sales office, but it was Sunday and the small house was dark. I walked up the long drive, bundled in my wool parka. The cobblestones, too, had been sold, and the drive was frozen mud, slippery in places, so I took my time. The flowers that bordered the drive were all gone, of course, but the poplars still stood, bare now, grey and spindly.
In the forecourt at the end of the drive, the ornamental fountain was still there, but someone had forgotten to drain it last autumn, and the marble was cracked and filled with dirty ice. And beyond the forecourt, where Alhambra had once stood, was a great heap of rubble: red roofing tile, white stucco, rafters, and beams. Indeed, they had bulldozed the entire mansion as Bellarosa had said they would. But I had no way of knowing if it was a spiteful act or if the developer simply wanted to be rid of the white elephant. As it was Sunday, the earth-moving equipment was silent, and no one seemed to be around. It was very quiet, that sort of deep winter quiet where you can hear the ground crackle underfoot, and the trees creaking in the cold wind. I could tell you I heard ghostly hoofbeats on the solid earth, too, but I didn't, though I thought about Susan and me on one of our winter rides. I thought, too, of last January, and of the black Cadillac that was here, or wasn't here, and the man whom I saw or didn't see. And it occurred to me that if he hadn't been lost that day and hadn't seen this place, then things would have been different today, most probably better since I couldn't imagine how they could be much worse.
Regarding Bellarosa's death, I still had mixed feelings about that. Initially, I had been relieved, nearly glad, to be honest. I mean, the man had caused me much unhappiness and had seduced my wife (or was it the other way around?), and his death solved a good many problems for me. Even seeing him lying there on the floor, half naked and covered with gore, had not affected me. But now, after some time, I realized that I actually missed him, and that he's gone forever, and that I lost a friend. Well, but as I say, I still have mixed emotions. Anyway, I noticed four long crates lying near the rubble and moved closer to them and saw that they held the four Carthaginian columns, all ready for shipping, though I didn't know where they were headed this time. Not back to Carthage, that was for certain, but maybe to a museum or to another rich man's house, or maybe the government had declared them a saleable asset and they'd sit forgotten in a warehouse forever.
I continued my walk, veering around the heap of rubble toward the rear of the property. All around me were stacks of building materials and earth-moving equipment. I noticed engineer stakes stuck in the ground, connected by string with white strips of cloth hanging from the string, and there were surveyors' stakes as well, and masonry stakes and all sorts of other things stuck in the ground like dissecting pins on the carved-up earth.
As I walked, I could see that most of the fifty or so foundations had been dug and poured, and though many of the trees had been spared, the land was irrevocably altered, suffused with water and gas pipes and cesspools, and crisscrossed with power lines and paved with blacktop and concrete. Another few hundred acres had gone from rural to suburban, from pristine to scarred, and hundreds of people from someplace or another were on their way here, though they didn't know it yet, bringing with them their worries and their future divorces, and their propane barbecue grills and their mailboxes with numbers on them, and their hopes for a new life in a nicer place than the last. The American dream, you know, constantly needs new landscapes.
Stanhope Hall's acreage is gone, too, of course, and a few of the houses there are nearly complete, wood and Thermopane contemporaries with lots of skylights and oversize garages and central air-conditioning; not too bad, I admit, but not too good either.
The big house, the former Stanhope Hall, has indeed been sold intact to a Japanese firm of some sort, but I see no sign of twitchy Nipponese businessmen strolling around the paths or doing callisthenics on the great lawn. In fact, the place looks as deserted as it has been for nearly twenty years. Local rumour at McGlade's Pub, where I spend too much time, has it that the little people are going to dismantle the mansion stone by stone and send it to Japan, though nobody at McGlade's seems to know why.
The love temple, too, has survived, and the developer of the Stanhope acreage has used a picture of it in his ads, promising the splendour and the glory of Gold Coast living to the first hundred people who can come up with the down payments and mortgages on the half-million-dollar tractor sheds he's building. The sacred grove is gone, however, as no one is interested in ten acres of dying plum trees in their backyards. But the gazebo and hedge maze are part of the great house, so they might survive, though I don't recommend the maze for strung-out Oriental businessmen.
So the Stanhope and Alhambra estates are divided like spoils in an ancient war, their walls and gates no longer useful for keeping people out, and their great structures destroyed or used for sport or for building material elsewhere. But that's not my problem anymore.
I kept walking over the hard ground until I came to where Alhambra's reflecting pool and fountain had been, or where I thought they had been, but there was an open foundation there, and an unpaved road passed through where the classical garden and imitation Roman ruins had once stood. Neptune and Mary were gone, probably having left in disgust.
I turned around and headed back toward the rubble heap, walking along the patch on which Anna had walked when she spotted me that Easter morning, and a smile came to my lips. I continued on and reached the back patio, which was still intact, though the post lights and pizza oven were gone. I walked across the patio and looked at the demolished house. Half the rubble had been carted away, but I could still identify most of the rooms, especially the central palm court, and I could actually see where Frank Bellarosa had lain dead.
To my right was the kitchen and the breakfast room where the Bellarosas had entertained us in more ways than one, and to the left was the ballroom, sometimes known as the living room, where I had done a little soft-shoe for Susan. Behind this room was the conservatory, crushed now, a pile of broken glass, plant tables, and clay pots.
I turned away from the house and picked my way around the construction debris in the failing light until I was back in front of the mansion, in the forecourt, near the broken fountain, where Susan's Jaguar had once sat and where she and I once stood, in a picture-perfect setting, like an ad for something good and expensive, and I fancied I saw Susan and me standing there waiting for someone to answer the door on that spring evening.
I walked back down the long drive hunched against the wind. Beyond the gates and across Grace Lane I saw the DePauw house, lights shining from its big colonial windows, a cheery sight unless you weren't in the mood for cheery sights. As I walked, I thought of Susan the last time I'd seen her. It was in November, in Manhattan. A hearing had been convened at Federal Court in Foley Square, at which I was present, though not as Susan's attorney or husband, but as a witness to the events surrounding the death of a federal witness, Mr Frank Bellarosa. As it turned out, I was not even asked to give testimony, and the commission took only a few hours to recommend that the case not be presented to a grand jury, finding that Susan Sutter, while not justified in her actions, was not responsible for them. This seemed a little vague to me, but there was some talk of diminished capacity and a promise from the Stanhopes to seek professional help for their daughter. I hope William and Charlotte don't think that means art lessons or pistol practice. Anyway, the government took a dive on the case, of course, and Lady Justice didn't miscarry; she had an abortion. But I don't blame the government for aborting this tricky and sensitive case, and I'm happy they did, because my wife doesn't belong in jail.
I had made a point of running into Susan on the steps of the courthouse. She was surrounded by her parents, three of her parents' lawyers, and two family-retained psychiatrists. William didn't seem awfully thrilled to see me for some reason, and Charlotte stuck her nose in the air, I mean literally, like you see in old movies. You've got to be careful when you do that walking down steps.
Anyway, Susan broke away from the Stanhope guard and came over to me on the steps. She smiled. "Hello, John."
"Hello, Susan." I had congratulated her on a successful court appearance, and she had been cheery and buoyant, which was to be expected after walking free on a murder that was witnessed by about six federal agents, who fortunately couldn't seem to recall the incident clearly.
We'd spoken briefly, mostly about our children and not about our divorce. I asked her at one point, "Are you really crazy?"
She smiled. "Just enough to get me out of that courthouse. Don't tell." I smiled in return. We agreed that we both felt bad for Anna, but that maybe she was better off, though that wasn't true, and Susan asked me if I had gone to Frank's funeral, which I had. Susan said, "I should have gone, too, of course, but it might have been awkward."
"It possibly could have been." Since you killed him. I mean, really, Susan. But maybe she had already disassociated herself from that unpleasant incident. She was looking very good, by the way, dressed in a tailored grey silk shirt and jacket, appropriate for courtroom appearances, and wearing high heels, which she probably couldn't wait to kick off.
I didn't know when or if I'd see her again, so I said to her, "I still love you, you know."
"You'd better. Forever."
"Yes, forever."
"Me, too."
Well, we parted there on the steps, she to go back to Hilton Head, and me to Long Island. I was sharing the Stanhope gatehouse with Ethel Allard, who had insisted on taking me in when Susan sold the guesthouse. Ethel and I are getting along a little better than we had in the past. I drive her to the stores and to church on Sunday, though I don't go to stores or churches much myself anymore. The arrangement seems to be working out, and I'm glad for the opportunity to help someone who needs help, and Ethel is glad she finally got a chance to take in a homeless person. Father Hunnings approves, too. The guesthouse, incidentally, where Susan and I had spent our twenty-two years of married life, and where we had raised our two children, has been bought by an intense young couple who are here on a corporate transfer from Dubuque or Duluth or someplace out there, working their way up the corporate game of chutes and ladders. They both leave for Manhattan before dawn and return after dark. They're not quite sure where they are geographically or socially, but they seem anxious that the Stanhope subdivision be completed so they can have friends and start a bowling team or something.
Jenny Alvarez and I still see each other from time to time, but she's involved with a baseball star now, a Mets infielder of all things, but I don't rub that in when I see her.
I had actually gone to Bellarosa's funeral as I told Susan. The Mass was at Santa Lucia, of course, and Monsignor Chiaro gave a beautiful service and spoke well of the deceased, so I guess the cheque cleared.
The burial itself was at an old cemetery in Brooklyn, and it was a real mafioso affair with a hundred black limousines and so many flowers at graveside that they covered a dozen other graves in all directions. Sally Da-da was there, of course, and we nodded to each other, and Jack Weinstein was there, and we made indefinite plans to have lunch. Anthony was there, too, out on bail for some charge or other, and Fat Paulie was there, and a guy whose face was half eaten away who I guess was my godfather, Aniello, and there were whole faces, too, that I recognized from the Plaza soiree, and from Giulio's. Anna did not look particularly good in black, or particularly good at all for that matter. She had been surrounded by so many wailing women that she never saw me, which was just as well.
Also with Anna, of course, were her three sons, Frankie, Tommy, and Tony. I recognized Frankie as the oldest, a sort of big lummox who looked more benign than dangerous. Tommy, the Cornell student, looked like an all-American kid, the sort who might wind up working for a Fortune 500 company. Tony, whom I had met, was in his La Salle uniform, looking very ramrod straight and clean-cut, but if you looked past the uniform and the short hair, you saw Frank Bellarosa. You saw eyes that appraised everyone and everything. In fact, he looked at me for a while as though he were sizing me up, and the resemblance to his father was so uncanny that I actually had to blink to make certain I wasn't seeing a ghost. At one point in the graveside service, I saw Tony staring at his uncle Sal, aka Sally Da-da, and if I were Uncle Sal, I'd keep an eye on that kid. Anyway, Mr Mancuso was present, but tactfully stood some distance away with four photographers recording the event for posterity or other reasons. I recalled what old Monsignor Chiaro had said at graveside, quoting from Timothy: We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. Which was the best news I'd heard since "We pass this way but once."
And so, I thought, as I walked between Alhambra's stately poplars that had so impressed Frank Bellarosa, there is an ebb and flow in all human events, there is a building up and a tearing down, there are brief enchanted moments in history and in the short lives of men and women, there is wonder and there is cynicism, there are dreams that can come true, and dreams that can't. And there was a time, you know, not so long ago, as recently as my own childhood in fact, when everyone believed in the future and eagerly awaited it or rushed to meet it. But now nearly everyone I know or used to know is trying to slow the speed of the world as the future starts to look more and more like someplace you don't want to be. But maybe that is not a cultural or national phenomenon, only my own middle age, my present state of mind combined with this dark winter season.
But spring follows as surely as winter ends. Right? And I have my eye on a used Allied fifty-five footer that I can pick up for a song in the winter months if I can get my prestigious law firm to settle up with me. And Carolyn and Edward will crew for me over Easter week on a shakedown cruise, and by summer I'll be ready to set out again with my children if they want to come, or with anyone else who wants to crew aboard the Paumanok II. I'll stop in Galveston to see Emily, then if I can shanghai her and Gary or any two or three people who are game enough, we'll do circumnavigation of the globe. Hey why not? You only live once.
I slipped out through the gates of Alhambra and began the walk up Grace Lane toward the gatehouse and Ethel's Sunday roast.
And maybe, I thought, when I come back to America, I'll put in at Hilton Head and see if forever is forever.