The Gate House (13 page)

“What book was that in?”

He ignored me and continued his riff. “The fucking bureaucrats are up our asses, the men in this country act like women, and the women act like men, and all anyone cares about is bread and circuses. You see what I’m saying?”

“I know the argument, Anthony.” I gave him some good news and said, “At least organized crime is almost eradicated.”

He stubbed out his cigarette, then said, “You think?”

Anthony was a perfect example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. Regarding the purpose of this dinner, I asked him, “So, what would you like to know about your father?”

He lit another cigarette, sat back, then said, “I just want you to tell me . . . like, how you met. Why you decided to do business. I mean . . . why would a guy like you . . . you know, get involved in a criminal case?”

“You mean organized crime?”

He wasn’t about to go there. I mean, like, you know, there is no Mafia. No Cosa Nostra. Whaddaya talkin’ about?

Anthony reminded me, “You defended him on a murder charge, which, as you know, Counselor, was bullshit.” He asked me again, “So, how did you and my father get together and wind up doing business?”

I replied, “It was mostly a personal relationship.” I added, “We clicked, and he needed some help.”

“Yeah? But why did you stick your neck out?”

Anthony was testing the water to see what motivated me—
why
I hooked up with the mob, so to speak, and what it would take for me to do it again. In his world, the answer was money and power, but maybe he understood that in my world, it was more complex.

I replied, “I told you the other night—he did me a favor and I was repaying the favor.” Also, the whole truth was that Frank Bellarosa, in cahoots with my wife, played the macho card, i.e., Frank had a gun and a set of balls, and nice guy John had a pen and a good intellect. They were very subtle about that, of course, but this challenge to my manhood worked well. Plus, I was bored, and Susan knew that. What she didn’t know was that Frank Bellarosa also appealed to my darker side; evil is very seductive, which Susan discovered too late.

I said to Anthony, “Your father was a very charismatic man, and very persuasive.” Plus, he was screwing my wife so he could get to me through her, though I didn’t know that at the time.

And I don’t think Susan knew that, either. She probably thought that Frank was interested only in her. In fact, Frank was partly motivated by the convenience of pillow talk with his attorney’s wife, not to mention the thrill of screwing an uppity society bitch. But on another level, probably against his will, Frank felt something for Susan Sutter.

Anthony said, with some insight, “My father had a way of picking the right people. Like, he knew what
they
wanted, and he showed them how they could get it.”

I recalled learning about a guy like that in Sunday school, named Lucifer.

As per the supposed reason for this dinner, Anthony asked me a few questions regarding my personal memories of his father.

I answered by relating a few anecdotes that I thought would give him some nice snapshots of Pop.

I then recounted my and Susan’s first visit to Alhambra, at Frank’s invitation for coffee, and how I enjoyed Anna’s hospitality and warmth. I didn’t share with Anthony that I was royally ticked off at Susan for accepting the invitation, or that my impressions of the Bellarosas as my new Gold Coast next-door-mansion neighbors were not entirely favorable. In fact, I was horrified. But also a little intrigued, as was Susan.

In any case, I kept it light and positive, skipping over my subsequent seduction by Frank Bellarosa, and Frank’s seduction of my wife (or vice versa), and our final descent into hell. That might be a little complicated for Anthony, and none of his business.

This all took about fifteen minutes, during which my wonton soup came and sat there, while I sipped Scotch and Anthony smoked, flipped ashes on the floor, and said very little.

When I’d finished, I said, “So, that’s about it.” I added, “I was sorry for what happened, and I want you to know that I share your grief, and that of your mother, brothers, and your whole family.”

Anthony nodded.

I announced, “I’m not really hungry, and I have a lot of work to do at home, so thanks for the drinks.” I reached for my wallet and said, “Let me split the bill.”

He seemed surprised that I’d actually want to forgo his company, and asked, “What’s your rush?”

“I just told you.”

“Have another drink.” He called out to the waitress, “Two more!” then asked me, “You want a cigarette?”

“No, thank you.”

That settled, he returned to a prior subject and asked, “Hey, how did you let the Feds grab Alhambra? I mean, you do this for a living. Right?”

“Right. You win some, you lose some.” I added, “Even Jesus said to give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”

“Yeah, but Jesus was a nice guy, and he didn’t have a tax lawyer. Or a criminal attorney.” Anthony smiled and continued, “That’s why he got nailed.”

I reminded him, “I was on my way to beating the murder charge.”

“Yeah, okay, but if my father didn’t do anything criminal, then how did they get his property?”

“I told you. Tax evasion.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“No, it’s
criminal
.” The truth was, as I said, and as Anthony surely knew, the Justice Department and the IRS had enough real and manufactured evidence on Frank Bellarosa to make his life a living hell. Plus, Frank’s own brother-in-law, Sally Da-da—Anna’s sister’s husband—had tried to whack Frank, and Frank’s aura of power and strength was waning. So he took the easy way out and accepted the government’s deal. To wit: Tell us about every crime you ever committed, Frank, and give us the names of your hoodlum friends. Then you abdicate your title, give us all your money, and you can go into exile a free man. Not a bad deal, and better than prison. Plus, the exile to Italy fit in nicely with Frank and Susan’s plans to run off together, but I didn’t think Anthony wanted to know all of that. In fact, he
wanted
the bullshit.

“And there was nothing you could do to hold on to Alhambra?”

“No.”

“Okay . . . hey, I heard that my father also owned your place. He bought that, too.”

“He bought Stanhope Hall from my father-in-law.” I was tempted to say, “I think he needed more room to bury bodies,” but I said, “He wanted to control the land development around his estate.” In fact, as I said, Susan had most probably talked her lover into that purchase. My father-in-law, William the Skinflint, wanted to dump this expensive white elephant, and for the right price he would have sold it to the devil. Actually, he did.

Susan had been upset at the thought of the family home passing into the hands of some stranger or a developer, and I believe she saw don Bellarosa as her white knight who could save the estate for her. I have no idea what the deal was between her and her lover, but I suspected that she at least had thoughts of living there with Frank. But then Frank sold out to the Feds and went into the Witness Protection Program, and Italy, I think, became Plan B.

I really should have insisted that I had to go, but Anthony seemed obsessed with the Federal government seizing a sizable fortune in property and cash from his father, going so far as to ask me, “Hey, do you think I have a shot at getting that back?”

“You have about as much chance of recovering assets seized under the RICO Act as I have of getting the Man of the Year Award from the Sons of Italy.”

He persisted. “How about those millions in bond money that you posted for my father? Right? He died before the trial, and he didn’t commit the murder. So why can’t you get that back?”

I saw where this was going, of course, and I definitely didn’t want to go there. I said, “As I understand it, those assets, including Stanhope Hall, were returned to your father’s estate, then seized as part of his tax settlement with the IRS.”

“Yeah, but—”

“There are no buts, Anthony. I did what I could at the time. Your father was satisfied with my representation, and there are no do-overs.”

Bottom line, his obsession with the lost fortune was mostly smoke. What he was after was me, and thus his veiled criticism of how I handled this case a decade ago, and now he was going to give me the opportunity to get it right; to see that justice was done. Next stop after that was the slippery slope into his underworld. Thanks, but no thanks. Been there, Anthony. The pay is good, but the price is too high.

He said to me, “If you took this on, I’d give you two hundred up front, and a third of what you got back from the Feds.” He added, in case I didn’t get the math, “That could be three, four, maybe five million for you.”

He wasn’t actually as dim as I thought, and he also figured out that I probably needed the dough, which would make most men vulnerable to the temptations of the devil. I replied, “Actually, it’s about zero.”

“No, you at least get two hundred up front and it’s yours.”

“No, it’s
yours
.”

He seemed a little exasperated and tried a new approach. “Hey, Counselor, I think you owe me and my family something on this.”

“Anthony, I don’t owe you a thing.” In fact, Junior, your father owes me fifty large. I continued, “At the end, I wasn’t working for your father when he cut his own deal with the government. The only representation he had, as far as I know, was his personal attorney, Jack Weinstein”—who was actually a mob attorney—“so you should speak to him if you haven’t already.”

“Jack is retired.”

“So am I.”

As far as I was concerned, this meeting was over. We’d covered the walk down memory lane, and I’d squashed the clumsy recruiting pitch, so unless Junior wanted to hear that his father had actually been a government stool pigeon, or wanted to hear about my feelings on the subject of his father pulling some strings to get my tax returns examined, or seducing my wife, then there was little else to talk about—unless he wanted to talk about the night his father was murdered. On that subject, I reminded him, “Don’t forget what we discussed regarding my ex-wife.”

He nodded, then asked me, “I mean, do you give a shit?”

“My children do.”

He nodded again, and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Good.” I was about to reannounce my early departure, but then he said, “I never understood how she got off on that.”

“She had good lawyers.”

“Yeah? I guess that wasn’t you.”

“Anthony, go fuck yourself.”

Like his father, who rarely, if ever, heard a personal insult, he didn’t know how to react to that. He seemed to be wavering between explosive rage or sloughing it off as a joke. He picked the latter, and forced a laugh, saying, “You got to learn to curse in Italian. You say, vaffanculo. That means, like, Go fuck your ass. In English, we say, Go fuck
yourself
. Same thing.”

“Interesting. Well—”

“But, I mean, do you think it’s fair that she walked on a premeditated murder? She got a different kind of justice because of who she is. Right? I mean, what is this? Open season on Italians?”

“This subject is closed. Or take it up with the Justice Department.”

“Yeah, right.”

“And don’t even
think
about what you’re thinking about.”

He stared at me, but said nothing.

I started to slide out of the booth, but the waitress appeared with two covered serving dishes, and the sweet but obviously inexperienced young lady asked us, “You want to share?”

Anthony, whose mood had darkened somewhat, reminded her, “We got the same fucking thing.” He looked at me and asked, “You believe this moron?” He turned to her and inquired, “You jerking us around? We look stupid to you?”

The waitress seemed not to understand and asked, “You no like soup?”

Anthony snapped at her, “Get the soup out of here and bring a couple of beers. Chop, chop.”

She took the soup and left.

Frank Bellarosa had hid his thugishness well, though I’d seen it a few times, and heard about it from FBI agent Mancuso. His son, however, apparently hadn’t learned that a good sociopath understood how and when to be polite and charming. Anthony had been okay in the gatehouse—in fact, I’d thought he was a bit of a lightweight—but if you watch how powerful men treat the little people, you know how they will treat you when you don’t have anything they want.

Anthony said, “She forgot the fucking chopsticks. Didn’t you ask for chopsticks?” He raised his hand and was about to shout across the room, but I said, “Forget it.”

“No. I’ll get—”

“I said,
forget
it.” I leaned toward him, and he looked at me. I said to him, “When she returns, you will apologize to her for your bad behavior.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Anthony. And here’s another etiquette tip for you—if I want chopsticks,
I’ll
ask for them—not you. And if I want a beer,
I’ll
order the beer. Understand?”

He understood, but he wasn’t happy with the lesson. Interestingly, he said nothing.

I slid out of the booth.

He asked, “Where you going?”

“Home.”

He got up, followed me, and said, “Hey, Counselor, don’t run off. We’re not done yet.”

I turned toward him, and we were almost face-to-face. I said to him, “We have nothing more to talk about on any subject.”

“You know that’s not true. We both got some things to work out.”

“Maybe. But not together, Anthony.”

We were attracting a little attention, so he said, “I’ll walk you out.”

“No. You’ll go back to your seat, apologize to the waitress, then do whatever the hell you want with the rest of your life.”

A sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he said, “Yeah, I see the balls, but I don’t see the brains, Counselor.”

I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Anthony’s goon had stood and moved a few feet toward us. The restaurant was very quiet now, and I said to Frank Bellarosa’s son, “You have your father’s eyes, but not much else.”

I turned and walked toward the door, not knowing what to expect.

I went out into the cool night air. Tony was on a smoke break, leaning against the Cadillac SUV, and called out to me, “Hey, you done already?”