"The Gate House" - читать интересную книгу автора (DeMille Nelson)

CHAPTER THREE

He said, “Do you remember me?”

It was not, of course, the ghost of Frank Bellarosa. It was Frank’s son Tony, whom I had last seen at his father’s funeral, ten years ago.

I get annoyed when people ask, “Do you remember me?” instead of having the common courtesy to introduce themselves. But this, I suspected, was not Tony Bellarosa’s most irritating social flaw, nor his only one. I replied, “Yes, I remember you.” I added, in case he thought I was winging it, “Tony Bellarosa.”

He smiled, and I saw Frank again. “Anthony. It’s Anthony now.” He inquired, “You got a minute?”

I had several replies, none of which contained the word “Yes.” I asked him, “What can I do for you?”

He seemed a little put off, then asked, “Can I come in? Oh…” He seemed suddenly to have thought of the only logical explanation for my slow response to the doorbell and my not being thrilled to see him, and he asked, “You got somebody in there?”

A nod and a wink would have sent him on his way, but I didn’t reply.

“Mr. Sutter?”

Well, you’re not supposed to invite a vampire to cross your threshold, and I think the same rule applies for sons of dead Mafia dons. But for reasons that are too complex and too stupid to go into, I said, “Come in.”

I stepped aside, and Anthony Bellarosa entered the gatehouse and my life. I closed the door and led young Anthony into the small sitting room.

I indicated a rocking chair – Ethel’s chair – near the ash-heaped fireplace, and I took George’s threadbare wingback chair facing my guest. I did not offer him a drink.

Anthony did a quick eye-recon of the room, noting, I’m sure, the shabby furnishings, the faded wallpaper, and the worn carpet.

Also, he may have been evaluating some personal security issues. His father used to do this, more out of habit than paranoia. Frank Bellarosa also had an unconscious habit of checking out every female in the room while he was checking to see if anyone might want to kill him. I admire people who can multitask.

In the case of Susan Sutter, however, Frank had missed some crucial clues and signs of trouble. If I could speculate about those last few minutes of Frank Bellarosa’s life, I’d guess that the blood in Frank’s big brain had flowed south into his little brain at a critical moment. It happens. And when it does, the rest of your blood can wind up splattered around the room, as happened to poor Frank.

Anthony said, “Nice little place here.”

“Thank you.” In fact, these old estate gatehouses looked quaint and charming on the outside, but most of them were claustrophobic. I don’t know how I managed to share this cottage with Ethel, even for the short time I was here. I recall going out a lot.

Anthony asked me, “You lived here for a while. Right?”

“Right.”

“And you’re back from London. Right?”

I wondered how he knew that.

“But this Arab who owns the mansion owns this place, too. Right?”

“Right.” I further informed him, “He’s an Iranian.”

“Right. A fucking Arab.”

“The Iranians are not Arabs.”

“What are they?”

“Persians.”

This seemed to confuse him, so he changed the subject and asked, “So, you’re… what? Buying it? Renting it?”

“I’m a houseguest of Mrs. Allard.”

“Yeah? So, how’s the old lady?”

“Dying.”

“Right. No change there.”

Obviously, he’d been making inquiries. But why?

“So what happens after she dies?”

I informed him, “She goes to heaven.”

He smiled. “Yeah? And where do you go?”

“Wherever I want.” I suppose I should find out what plans Mr. Nasim had for this house. Maybe he wanted to rent it by the month. But rental prices and sale prices were astronomical on the Gold Coast of Long Island, and they’d actually been going up since 9/11 as thousands of people were quietly abandoning the city out of… well, fear.

“Mr. Sutter? I said, how long are you staying?”

“Until she dies.” I looked at him in the dim light of the floor lamp. I suppose you’d say Anthony Bellarosa was handsome in a way that women, but not men, would think is handsome. Like his father, his features were a little heavy – the women would say sensual – with full lips and dark liquidy eyes. His complexion, also like his father’s, was olive – his mother, Anna, was very fair – and his well-coiffed hair, like Frank’s, was dark and wavy, but probably longer than Pop would have liked. No doubt Anthony – also like his father – did well with the ladies.

He was dressed more casually than his father had dressed. Frank always wore a sports jacket with dress slacks and custom-made shirts. All in bad taste, of course, but at least you knew that don Bellarosa dressed for his image. In the city, he wore custom-made silk suits, and his nickname in the tabloids had been “Dandy Don,” before it became “Dead Don.”

“So, when she dies, then you leave?”

“Probably.” Anthony was wearing scrotum-tight jeans, an awful Hawaiian shirt that looked like a gag gift, and black running shoes. He also wore a black windbreaker, maybe because it was a chilly night, or maybe because it hid his gun. The dress code in America had certainly gone to hell in my absence.

He said, “But you don’t know where you’re going. So maybe you’ll stay.”

“Maybe.” Anthony’s accent, like his father’s, was not pure low-class, but I heard the streets of Brooklyn in his voice. Anthony had spent, I guess, about six years at La Salle Military Academy, a Catholic prep school on Long Island, whose alumni included some famous men, and some infamous men, such as don Bellarosa. No one would mistake the Bellarosa prep school accents for St. Paul’s, where I went, but the six years at boarding school had softened Anthony’s “dese, dose, and dems.”

“So, you and the old lady are, like, friends?”

I was getting a little annoyed at these personal questions, but as a lawyer I know questions are more revealing than answers. I replied, “Yes, we’re old friends.” In fact, as I said, she hated me, but here, in this old vanished world of gentry and servants, of ancient family ties and family retainers, of class structure and noblesse oblige, it didn’t matter much at the end of the day who was master and who was servant, or who liked or disliked whom; we were all bound together by a common history and, I suppose, a profound nostalgia for a time that, like Ethel herself, was dying but not yet quite dead. I wondered if I should explain all this to Anthony Bellarosa, but I wouldn’t know where to begin.

“So, you’re taking care of the place for her?”

“Correct.”

Anthony nodded toward the opening to the dining room, and apropos of the stacks of paper, said, “Looks like you got a lot of work there.” He smiled and asked, “Is that the old lady’s will?”

In fact, I had found her will, so I said, “Right.”

“She got millions?”

I didn’t reply.

“She leave you anything?”

“Yes, a lot of work.”

He laughed.

As I said, I am Ethel’s attorney for her estate, such as it is, and her worldly possessions are to pass to her only child, the aforementioned Elizabeth. Ethel’s will, which I drew up, left me nothing, which I know is exactly what Ethel wanted for me.

“Mr. Sutter? What were you doing in London?”

He was rocking in the chair, and I leaned toward him and inquired, “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

“Oh… just making conversation.”

“Okay, then let me ask you a few conversational questions. How did you know that Mrs. Allard was dying?”

“Somebody told me.”

“And how did you know I was living in London, and that I was back?”

“I hear things.”

“Could you be more specific, Mr. Bellarosa?”

“Anthony. Call me Anthony.”

That seemed to be as specific as he was going to get.

I looked at his face in the dim light. Anthony had been about seventeen or eighteen – a junior or senior at La Salle – when my wife murdered his father. So, he was not yet thirty, but I could see in his eyes and his manner that unlike most American males, who take a long time to grow up, Anthony Bellarosa was a man, or at least close to it. I recalled, too, that he used to be Tony, but that diminutive lacked gravitas, so now he was Anthony.

More importantly, I wondered if he’d taken over his father’s business.

The most fundamental principle of American criminal law is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. But in this case, I recalled quite clearly what Frank Bellarosa had said about his three sons. “My oldest guy, Frankie, he’s got no head for the family business, so I sent him to college, then set him up in a little thing of his own in Jersey. Tommy is the one in Cornell. He wants to run a big hotel in Atlantic City or Vegas. I’ll set him up with Frankie in Atlantic City. Tony, the one at La Salle, is another case. He wants in.”

I looked at Anthony, formerly known as Tony, and recalled Frank’s pride in his youngest son when he concluded, “The little punk wants my job. You know what? If he wants it bad enough, he’ll have it.”

I suspected that Tony did get the job and became don Anthony Bellarosa. But I didn’t know that for sure.

Anthony asked me, “Is it okay if I call you John?”

“I’m Tony now.” It’s probably not a good idea to make fun of a possible Mafia don, but I did it with his father, who appreciated my lack of ring-kissing. In any case, I needed to establish the pecking order.

Anthony forced a smile and said, “I remember calling you Mr. Sutter.”

I didn’t reply to that and asked him, “What can I do for you, Anthony?”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry to just drop in, but I was driving by, and I saw the lights on here, and like I said, I heard you were back, so the gate was closed and I came in through the… what do you call it? The people gate.”

“The postern gate.”

“Yeah. It was unlocked. You should lock that.”

“I’m not the gatekeeper.”

“Right. Anyway, so I got this idea to stop and say hello.”

I think it was a little more premeditated than that. I said to him, “I hope you’re not blocking the gate.”

“No. My driver took the car up the road. Hey, do you remember Tony? My father’s driver.”

“I remember that he used to be Anthony.”

He smiled. “Yeah. We made a deal. Less confusing.”

“Right.” I didn’t think the dead don’s driver had much to say about that deal. Regarding the family business, the surviving employees, and the rules of succession, I recalled quite clearly that there was another member of the family who wanted Frank Bellarosa’s job, so, to see how Anthony reacted, I asked, “How is your uncle Sal?”

Anthony Bellarosa stared at me and did not reply. I stared back.

The last time I’d seen Salvatore D’Alessio, a.k.a. Sally Da-da, was at Frank’s funeral. Prior to my wife clipping Frank Bellarosa, someone else had attempted the same thing, and the prime suspect was Uncle Sal. This had occurred at a restaurant in Little Italy, at which I was unfortunately present and close enough to Dandy Don Bellarosa and Vinnie, his bodyguard, to get splattered with Vinnie’s blood. Not one of my better nights out.

In any case, Uncle Sal was not present at the failed hit, of course, but his signature was most probably on the contract. I hate it when families squabble, and though I’m personally familiar with the problem, none of the Sutters or Stanhopes, to the best of my knowledge, have ever taken out a contract on a family member… though it’s not a bad idea. In fact, I think I just found some use for Anthony Bellarosa. Just kidding. Really.

Anthony finally replied, “He’s okay.”

“Good. Give your uncle Sal my regards when you see him.”

“Yeah.”

There are some things in life that you never forget, and those months during the spring and summer leading up to Frank’s death in October and my leaving Susan are filled with sights and sounds that are truly burned into my mind forever. In addition to seeing Vinnie’s head blown off with a shotgun right in front of my face, another sight that I will never forget is of young Anthony Bellarosa at his father’s graveside. The boy held up extremely well – better than his mother, Anna, who was wailing and fainting every few minutes – and in Anthony’s eyes I could see something beyond grief, and I saw him staring at his uncle Sal with such intensity that the older man could not hold eye contact with his young nephew. It was obvious to me, and to everyone, that the boy knew that his uncle had tried to kill his father. It was also obvious that Anthony Bellarosa would someday settle the score. So I was surprised to discover that Uncle Sal was still alive and well – and that Uncle Sal hadn’t killed Anthony yet.

These gentlemen, however, as I’d learned in my brief association with don Bellarosa and his extended family, were extremely patient and prudent when considering who needed to be whacked, and when.

On that subject, I wondered how Anthony felt about Susan Sutter, who’d succeeded where Uncle Sal had failed. Now that Susan was back – about four hundred yards from here, actually – I wondered… but maybe that was a subject best left alone, so I stuck to family chatter and asked Anthony, “How is your mother?”

“She’s good. Back in Brooklyn.” He added, “I’ll tell her I saw you.”

“Please pass on my regards.”

“Yeah. She liked you.”

“The feeling was mutual.” Hanging over this conversation, of course, was the awkward fact that my then-wife had made Anna Bellarosa a widow, and made Anthony and his two brothers fatherless. I asked, “And your brothers? Frankie and Tommy, right?”

“Right. They’re doing good.” He asked me, “How about your kids?”

“They’re doing fine,” I replied.

“Good. I remember them. Smart kids.”

“Thank you.”

The road that passes by Stanhope Hall and Alhambra, Grace Lane, is private and dead ends at the Long Island Sound, so Anthony Bellarosa was not just passing through, and I had the thought that he still lived in this area, which was not a good thought, but I wanted to know, so I asked him, “Where are you living?”

He replied, “On my father’s old estate.” He added, “There’s some houses built there now, and I bought one of them.” He explained, “They’re called Alhambra Estates. Five-acre zoning.”

I didn’t reply, but I recalled that as part of Frank’s stay-out-of-jail deal with the government, he’d had to forfeit Alhambra for unpaid taxes on illegal earnings and/or for criminal penalties. The last time I was on the property after Frank’s death, the magnificent villa had been bulldozed, and the acreage had been subdivided into building plots to maximize the income to the government, and also for spite.

I’d actually driven past the former estate a few times since I’d been back, and I’d caught a glimpse of the new houses through the wrought-iron gates, and what I saw were mini-Alhambras with red-tiled roofs and stucco walls, as though the rubble of the main mansion had regenerated into small copies of itself. I wondered if the reflecting pool and the statue of Neptune had survived.

Anyway, I now discovered that Anthony Bellarosa had purchased one of these tract villas. I wasn’t sure if this was ironic, symbolic, or maybe Anthony had simply gotten a good deal from the builder, Dominic, who was a paesano of Frank’s.

Anthony seemed to be brooding about his lost patrimony and informed me, “The fucking Feds stole the property.”

It annoys me when people (like my ex-wife) rewrite history, especially if I was present at the historical moment in question. Anthony, however, may not have actually known the circumstances surrounding his lost birthright, but he could certainly guess if he had half a brain and a willingness to face the facts.

Apparently, he had neither of these things, and he continued, “The fucking Feds stole the property and put my family out on the street.”

Against my better judgment, I informed Anthony, “Your father gave Alhambra to the government.”

“Yeah. They put a gun to his head, and he gave it to them.”

I should have just ended his unannounced visit, but he had a few more points to make, and I was… well, maybe worried about Susan. I mean, she was still the mother of my children. I looked closely at Anthony. He didn’t look like a killer, but neither did his father. Neither did Susan for that matter. I’ll bet Frank was surprised when she pulled the gun and popped off three rounds.

Anthony was expanding on his subject and said, “They used the fucking RICO law and grabbed everything they could get their hands on after he… died.” Anthony then gave me a historical parallel. “Like the Roman emperors did when a nobleman died. They accused him of something and grabbed his land.”

I never actually thought of Frank Bellarosa as a Roman nobleman, but I could see the Justice Department and the IRS in the role of a greedy and powerful emperor. Nevertheless, I lost my patience and informed him, “The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act is tough, and not always fairly applied, but-”

“It sucks. What happened to due process?”

“Do you have a law degree, Mr. Bellarosa?”

“No. But-”

“Well, I do. But let’s forget the law here. I happen to know, firsthand, that your father agreed to hand over certain assets to the Justice Department in exchange for…” I could see that Anthony Bellarosa knew where this was going, and he did not want to hear that his father had broken the only law that counted – the law of omertà – silence.

So, under the category of speaking only well of the dead, I said to Anthony, “Your father owed some back taxes… I was his tax advisor… and he settled for turning over some assets to the Treasury Department, including, unfortunately, Alhambra.” Frank had also forfeited this property, Stanhope Hall, which he’d purchased, I think at Susan’s urging, from my idiot father-in-law William. But I wasn’t sure Anthony knew about that, and I didn’t want to get him more worked up, so I just said, “It wasn’t a bad deal.”

“It was robbery.”

In fact, it was surrender and survival. I recalled what Frank Bellarosa had told me when he was under house arrest, trying to justify his cooperation with the Feds. “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.”

Frank Bellarosa had concluded his unsolicited explanation to me by saying, “I was in jail once, Counselor, and it’s not a place for people like us. It’s for the new bad guys, the darker people, the tough guys.”

Anthony glanced at me, hesitated, then said, “Some guys said… you know, my father had enemies… and some guys said he was… selling information to the government.” He glanced at me again, and when I didn’t respond, he said, “Now I see that it was only tax problems. They got him on that once before.”

“Right.”

He smiled. “Like Al Capone. They couldn’t get Capone on bootlegging, so they got him for taxes.”

“Correct.”

“So, bottom line, Counselor, it was you that told him to pay up.”

“Right. That’s better than facing a criminal tax charge.” In fact, it was Frank Bellarosa who had helped me beat a criminal tax charge. Frank had actually engineered the tax charge against me, as I later found out, so the least he could do was get me off the hook. Then I owed him a favor, which I repaid by helping him with his murder charge. Not surprisingly, Frank’s role model was Niccolò Machiavelli, and he could quote whole passages of The Prince, and probably write the sequel.

Anthony asked me, “So, the Feds taking his property had nothing to do with the murder charge against him?”

“No.” And that was partly true. Ironically, Frank the Bishop Bellarosa, probably the biggest non-government criminal in America, hadn’t committed the murder he was charged with. There was undoubtedly little else he hadn’t done in twenty or thirty years of organized criminal activities, but this charge of murdering a Colombian drug lord had been a setup by the U.S. Attorney, Mr. Alphonse Ferragamo, who had a personal vendetta against Mr. Frank Bellarosa.

Anthony said to me, “You were one of his lawyers on that murder rap. Right?”

“Right.” I was actually his only lawyer. The so-called mob lawyers stayed out of sight while John Whitman Sutter of Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds stood in Federal criminal court in the unaccustomed role of trying to figure out how to get a Mafia don sprung on bail. Frank really didn’t like jail.

Anthony asked me, “Do you know that the FBI found the guys who clipped the Colombian?”

“I know that.” I’d actually heard this a few years ago from my daughter, who’s an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, and she was happy to tell me that I’d defended an innocent man. The words “innocent” and “Frank Bellarosa” are not usually used in the same sentence, but within the narrow limits of this case, I’d done the right thing, and so I was redeemed. Sort of.

Anthony informed me, “That scumbag, Ferragamo, had a hard-on for my father.”

“True.” Fact was, Mr. Ferragamo, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, wanted to bag the biggest trophy in his jungle – Frank Bellarosa. And he didn’t care how he did it. The murder indictment was bogus, but eventually Alphonse Ferragamo, like a jackal nipping away at a great cape buffalo, had brought down his prey.

Anthony continued his eulogy. “Nothing that scumbag charged ever stuck. It was all bullshit. It was personal. It was vendetta.”

“Right.” But it was business, too. Frank’s business and Alphonse’s business. Don Bellarosa was an embarrassment to the U.S. Attorney. Some of it – maybe more than I understood – was the Italian thing. But professionally, Alphonse Ferragamo couldn’t allow the biggest Mafia don in the nation to walk around free, living in a mansion, riding in expensive cars, and eating in restaurants that Alphonse Ferragamo couldn’t afford. Actually, I guess that’s personal.

So Ferragamo, through various means, legal and not so, finally got his teeth on the big buffalo’s balls, and Frank Bellarosa went down and screamed for mercy.

It’s part of our culture to romanticize the outlaw – Billy the Kid, Jesse James, the aforementioned Al Capone, and so forth – and we feel some ambivalence when the outlaw is brought down by the sanctimonious forces of law and order. Dandy Don Bellarosa, a.k.a. the Bishop, was a media darling, a source of endless public entertainment, and a celebrity. So when the word got out that he was under “protective custody” in his Long Island mansion, and cooperating with the Justice Department, many people either didn’t believe it, or felt somehow betrayed. Certainly his close associates felt betrayed and very nervous.

But before Frank Bellarosa could be paraded into a courtroom as a government witness, his reputation had been saved by Susan Sutter, who killed him. And his death at the hands of his married girlfriend, a beautiful red-haired society lady, only added to his posthumous legend and his bad-boy reputation.

The husband of the Mafia don’s girlfriend (me) got pretty good press, too. But not good enough to make it all worthwhile.

Oddly, Susan didn’t come off too well in the tabloids, and there was a public outcry for justice when the State of New York and the U.S. Attorney dropped any contemplated charges against her, which would have been premeditated murder and murdering a Federal witness, and whatever.

I missed a lot of this media fun by sailing off, and Susan missed some of it by moving to Hilton Head. The New York press quickly loses interest in people who are not in the contiguous boroughs or the surrounding suburban counties.

Anyway, to be honest, objective, and fair, the people who suffered the most in this affair – aside from Frank – were the Bellarosa family. They were all innocent civilians at the time of this crime of passion. Anthony may have made his bones since then, but when he lost his father he was a young student in prep school.

So I said to him, “I knew your father well enough to know that he did what he had to… to get the Feds off his back so that he’d be around for his wife and sons.”

Anthony did not reply, and I used that silence to change the subject. He was wearing a wedding ring, so I said, “You’re married.”

“Yeah. Two kids.”

“Good. A man should be married. Keeps him out of trouble.”

He thought that was funny for some reason.

Rather than beat around the bush, I asked him, “What business are you in?”

He replied without hesitation, “I took over my father’s company. Bell Enterprises. We do moving and storage, trash carting, limo service, security service… like that.”

“And who took over your father’s other businesses?”

“There was no other businesses, Mr. Sutter.”

“Right.” I glanced at my watch.

Anthony seemed in no hurry to get up and leave, and he informed me, “My father once said to me that you had the best combination of brains and balls he’d ever seen.” He added, “For a non-Italian.”

I didn’t reply to that, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about hearing it. Aside from the fact that it was a qualified compliment (non-Italian), I needed to consider the source.

Anthony’s visit obviously had a purpose beyond reminiscing about the past and welcoming me to the neighborhood. In fact, I smelled a job offer. The last time I’d worked for a Bellarosa, it had ruined my life, so I wasn’t anxious to try it again.

I started to rise, and Anthony said, “I just need a few more minutes of your time.”

I sat back in the wingback chair and said to him, “Please get to the point of your visit.”

Anthony Bellarosa seemed lost in thought, and I watched him. He had none of the commanding presence of his father, but neither was he a weenie trying to fill Pop’s handmade shoes; Anthony was the real thing, but not yet a finished product of his environment. Also, I had the impression he was toning down his inner thugishness for my benefit. And that meant he wanted something.

Finally, he said, “I ask around a lot about my father, from his friends and the family, and they all have these great things to say about him, but I thought since he really respected you… maybe you could give me some… like, something about him that his paesanos didn’t understand. You know?”

I know that people want to hear good things about their dearly departed from those who knew them, and clearly the boy idolized his father, so the alleged purpose of Anthony’s visit was to hear John Whitman Sutter – Ivy League WASP – say something nice and grammatical for the record. Then why did I think I was on a job interview? I replied, “I knew him for only about… oh, six months.”

“Yeah, but-”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Okay. And maybe think about how I can repay you for what you did.”

“What did I do?”

“You saved his life.”

I didn’t reply.

“The night at Giulio’s. When someone shot him. You stopped the bleeding.”

What in the world was I thinking when I did that? I mean, by that time, I was sure that he was screwing my wife. Not only that, it’s not a good idea to interfere with a Mafia hit. I mean, someone – in this case Salvatore D’Alessio – paid good money to have Frank Bellarosa clipped, and I screwed it up. So under the category of “no good deed goes unpunished,” Frank, after he recovered, hinted to me that his brother-in-law, Mr. D’Alessio, was not happy with me. I wondered if Uncle Sal was still annoyed. Or maybe, since my wife killed Frank afterwards, all was forgiven. Maybe I should ask Anthony to ask his uncle about that. Maybe not.

“Mr. Sutter? You saved his life.”

I replied, “I did what anyone who was trained in first aid would have done.” I added, “You don’t owe me anything.”

“It would make me feel good if I could return that favor.”

I clearly recalled Frank’s favors to me, which were not helpful, and I was certain that Anthony’s favors also came with a few strings attached. So, to nip this in the bud, and make myself perfectly clear, I said, “As it turned out, all I did was save your father’s life so my wife could kill him later.”

This sort of caught Anthony by surprise; he probably thought I wasn’t going to bring up the actual cause of his father’s death. I mean, Frank Bellarosa did not die from natural causes, unless getting shot by a pissed-off girlfriend was a natural cause in his universe.

To make my point more clear, I said, “Your father was fucking my wife. But I guess you know that.”

He didn’t reply for a few seconds, then said, “Yeah… I mean, it was in the papers.”

“And do you know that she’s back?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“How do you feel about that?”

He looked me right in the eye and replied, “I think she should have stayed away.”

“Me, too. But she didn’t.” We locked eyeballs and I said to him, “I assume there will not be a problem, Anthony.”

He held eye contact and said, “If we were going to have that kind of problem, Mr. Sutter, it wouldn’t matter if she was living on the moon. Capisce?”

I was sure now that I was speaking to the young don, and I said, “That is the favor you can do for me.”

He thought a moment, then said, “I don’t know what happened between them, but it was personal. So, when it’s personal between a man and a woman, then… we let it go.” He added, “There’s no problem.”

I recalled that when Frank Bellarosa said there was no problem, there was a problem. But I let it go for now, making a mental note to follow up with Anthony Bellarosa on the subject of not whacking my ex-wife. I mean, she hadn’t done me any favors lately, but as I said, she’s the mother of my children. I would point this out to Anthony, but then he’d remind me that Susan had left him without a father. It’s incredible, if you think about it, how much trouble is caused by putting Tab A into Slot B.

In any case, I’d really had enough strolling down memory lane, and I’d made my point, so I stood and said, “Thanks for stopping by.”

He stood also, and we moved into the foyer. I put my hand on the doorknob, but he stood away from the door. He asked me, “You seen your wife yet?”

“My ex-wife. No, I have not.”

“Well, you will. You can tell her everything’s okay.”

I didn’t reply, but I thought that Susan Stanhope Sutter had probably not given a single thought to the fact that she’d moved back into the neighborhood where she murdered a Mafia don. And by now, she must have heard that Anthony lived on the old Alhambra estate. Maybe she planned to pay a belated condolence call on Anthony since she hadn’t attended her lover’s funeral. I’m not being entirely facetious; Susan has this upper-class belief that just because you shoot a man, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be polite to his friends and family.

Anthony suggested, “Maybe we can go to dinner some night.”

“Who?”

“Us.”

“Why?”

“Like, just to talk.”

“About?”

“My father. He really respected you.”

I wasn’t sure I felt the same about don Bellarosa. I mean, he wasn’t pure evil. In fact, he was a good husband and good father, except for the extramarital affairs and getting his youngest son into organized crime. And he could be a good friend, except for the lying and manipulating, not to mention fucking my wife. He also had a sense of humor, and he laughed at my jokes, which showed good intellect. But did I respect him? No. But I liked him.

Anthony said, “My father trusted you.”

I’m sure Anthony really did want to know about his father; but he also wanted to know more about me, and why his father thought so highly of me. And then… well, like his father, he’d make me an offer I should refuse. Or was I being egotistical, or overly suspicious of Anthony’s neighborly visit?

Anthony saw that I was vacillating, so he said, “I’d consider it a favor.”

I recalled that these people put a high value on favors, whether they were offered or received, so I should not take the word lightly. On the other hand, one favor needed to be repaid with another, as I found out the hard way ten years ago. Therefore, absolutely no good could come of me having anything further to do with Anthony Bellarosa.

But… to blow him off might not be a good idea in regard to my concern about Susan. And if I was very paranoid, I’d also consider my own concern about Salvatore D’Alessio. As Frank once explained to me, “Italian Alzheimer’s is when you forget everything except who pissed you off.”

Anyway, there were still some blasts from the past that perhaps needed discussion, and with those thoughts in mind I made my second mistake of the evening and said, “All right. Dinner.”

“Good.” He smiled and asked, “How about Giulio’s?”

I really didn’t want to return to the restaurant in Little Italy where Frank took three shotgun blasts. Bad memories aside, I didn’t think the owner or staff would be happy to see me show up with Junior. I said, “Let’s try Chinese.”

“Okay. How about tomorrow night?”

It was Monday, and I needed about forty-eight hours to come to my senses, so I said, “Wednesday. There’s a place in Glen Cove called Wong Lee. Let’s say eight.”

“I can pick you up.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay. It’ll just be us.” Anthony reminded me, “You don’t want to mention the time and place to anybody.”

I looked at him, and our eyes met. I nodded, and he said, “Good.”

I started to open the door, but Anthony said, “Just a sec.” He pulled out his cell phone, speed-dialed, and said, “Yeah. Ready.” He hung up and asked me, “You want to come out and say hello to Tony?”

I wouldn’t have minded some fresh air, but as I learned at Giulio’s, it’s a good rule not to stand too close to anyone who needs a bodyguard, so I said, “Perhaps another time.”

He apparently needed a minute to be sure he wouldn’t be standing alone on a dark road, so to pass the time, he asked me, “How come you haven’t seen her?”

“I’m busy.”

“Yeah? Is she busy? She got a boyfriend?”

“I have no idea.”

He looked at me and surprised me with a deep philosophical insight by saying, “This is all pretty fucked up, isn’t it?”

I didn’t reply.

His cell phone rang, and he glanced at the display but did not answer. He said to me, “Thanks for your time.”

I opened the door and said, “Thank you for stopping by.”

He smiled and said, “Hey, you looked like you saw a ghost.”

“You have your father’s eyes.”

“Yeah?” He put out his hand, and we shook. He said, “See you Wednesday.”

He walked out into the chill air, and I watched him go through the small postern gate and out to the road where Tony stood beside a big black SUV of some sort. What happened to the Cadillacs? The SUV was running, but its headlights were off, and Tony had his left hand on the door handle and his right hand under his jacket.

Some of this was a little melodramatic, I thought, but you might as well follow the drill. You just never know. Then, I thought, maybe there’s an open contract out on Anthony Bellarosa. And I’m having dinner with this guy?

Before the boys completed the drill, I closed the door and went back into the dining room, where I poured myself a cup of cognac.

“Right. Pretty fucked up.”