The Gate House (18 page)

Well, for one thing, the Mafia is still around. But people who are part of the problem never see themselves as part of the problem; the problem is always someone else. I replied, “The problem, as I see it, is fast-food chains and lawyers. Too many of both.”

“Yeah, but it’s a lot more than that. Do you think a President could walk down this street today with one bodyguard?”

“You do. And he’s in the car.”

“I’m not the fucking President, John.”

I noticed he didn’t say, “No one is trying to kill me, John,” which was what most people would have said.

He continued, “Julius Caesar walked out of the Senate building, with no bodyguards, no Praetorian guards, because that’s how it was then. But they stabbed him to death. And that was the end of the Republic, and the beginning of the emperors thinking they were like gods. Understand?”

“I get your point. But there’s no turning back to a simpler time. Or a safer time.”

“Right . . . but, standing here, I think . . . I don’t know. Maybe . . . like, we lost something.”

He didn’t finish whatever thoughts had been forming in his mind, and quite frankly, I was surprised that he even had thoughts like this. I recalled, though, that his father also harbored some half-expressed worldviews that made him unhappy. And, I suppose, after 9/11, Anthony, like a lot of people, had come to the understanding that there was more to his self-absorbed life than a difficult wife, a complex family history, a clinging mother, and a stressful occupation. Quite possibly, he was thinking, too, about his own mortality.

Anthony lit a cigarette and continued to look at the building across the road. Finally, he said, “When I was a kid at La Salle, one of the brothers said to us, ‘Anyone in this room can be President of the United States.’” Anthony took a drag on his cigarette and concluded, “He was full of shit.”

Funny, they told us the same thing in my prep school, but at St. Paul’s, it was a possibility. I said to him, “We shape our own destiny, Anthony. We have dreams and ambitions, and we make choices. I, for instance, have chosen to go home.”

He actually thought that was funny, but he didn’t think that was one of my choices. He said, “Here’s my other point—my thought—” The traffic light changed and he took my arm and we crossed the busy street. I would have given anything just then to run into the Reverend James Hunnings. “Father, may I introduce my friend and business partner, don Anthony Bellarosa? You remember his father, Frank. Oh, and here’s my mother. Harriet, this is Frank Bellarosa’s little boy, Tony, all grown up and now called Anthony. And, oh my goodness, there’s Susan. Susan, come here and meet the son of the man you whacked. Doesn’t he look like his father?”

All right, enough of that. We reached the opposite sidewalk without meeting anyone I knew, or having to stop so don Bellarosa could sign autographs.

Anthony said to me, “My father once said, ‘There’s only two kinds of men in this world. Men who work for other people, and men who work for themselves.’”

I didn’t reply, because I knew where this was going.

He continued, “So, like, I work for myself. You work for other people.”

Again, I didn’t reply.

He continued, “So, what I’m thinking is that I front you the money you need to open an office here and hang out your shingle. What do you think about that?”

“It’s a long commute from London.”

“Hey, fuck London. You belong here. You could be in Teddy Roosevelt’s old office, and do your tax law stuff here. Hire a few secretaries, and before you know it, you’re raking in big bucks.”

“And I wonder who my first client will be.”

“Wrong. See? You’re wrong on that. You and me have no connection.”

“Except the money you loan me.”

“I’m not
loaning
you the money. I’m
fronting
it. I’m
investing
in you. And if it doesn’t work out for you, then I lose my investment, and I just kick your ass out of the office. You have no downside.”

“I don’t get my legs broken or anything like that?”

“Whaddaya talking about?”

“And what have I done to deserve this opportunity?”

“You know. For all that you did for my father. For saving his life. For being the one guy who never wanted anything from him, and for not wanting any harm to come to him.”

Actually, I did want something from him—a little excitement in my life, and I got that. As for the other thing, after I realized he was having an affair with my wife, I wished him great harm, and I got that, too. But I wasn’t about to tell Anthony that Pop and I were even on that score. Instead, I said to him with impatience in my voice, “Tell me exactly what the hell you want from me. And no bullshit about you investing in my future with no strings attached.”

We were attracting a little attention, and Anthony glanced around and said in a quiet voice, “Come upstairs and we can talk about that.” He added, “The apartment is empty. The realtor is coming in half an hour. I got the key.”

“Tell me here and now.”

He ignored me, turned toward the door, and unlocked it, revealing a small foyer and a long, steep staircase. He said, “I’ll be upstairs.”

“I won’t.”

He stepped into the foyer, looked back at me, and said, “You want to hear what I have to say.”

He turned and climbed the stairs.

I turned and walked away.

As I moved along Main Street, thinking about a taxi or running the five or six miles home, another thought, which I’d been avoiding, intruded into my head.

If I
really
thought about this, and let my mind come to an inevitable conclusion, then I knew that Anthony Bellarosa, despite what he’d told me, was not going to allow Susan, his father’s murderer, to live down the street. Or live at all. He just couldn’t do that. And there were undoubtedly people waiting for him to take care of it. And if he didn’t take care of it, then his
paesanos
—including probably his brothers—would wonder what kind of don this was.

And yet Anthony wanted me to work for him, and the unspoken understanding was that if I did this, then Susan was safe. For the time being.

So . . . I needed to at least go along with this, until I could speak to Susan. It really is all about keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer.

I turned and walked back to the building.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
he door was still ajar, and I climbed the stairs.

There was a landing at the top, and I opened the only door, which revealed the living room of an empty apartment. The carpet was worn, the beige paint was dingy, and the high plaster ceiling looked like it was ready to fall. An altogether depressing place, except that it had big windows and it was very sunny.

Another good feature was that the Mafia don seemed to have left. Then I heard a toilet flush, and a door at the far end of the room opened, and Anthony said, as if I’d been there the whole time, “The plumbing seems okay.” He looked around and announced, “All this shit needs to be ripped out. But I own a construction company—hey, you remember Dominic? He did the horse stable at your place.” He further informed me, “Sometime back in the thirties, they turned these offices into apartments. So, I get rid of the tenants, and I can get double the rent as office space. Right?”

I didn’t reply.

“I see big, fancy moldings, thick carpets, and mahogany doors. And you know what I see on that door? I see gold letters that say, ‘John Whitman Sutter, Attorney-at-Law.’ Can you see that?”

“Maybe.”

He didn’t seem to react to this hint of capitulation, figuring, correctly, that if I’d climbed the stairs, then I was ready to listen.

He said, “Let’s look at the other rooms.” He walked through a door, and I followed into a large corner bedroom from which I could see the streets below. The walls were painted white over peeling wallpaper, and the carpet looked like Astroturf. Anthony said to me, “The realtor said this was Roosevelt’s office.”

Actually, the realtor was mistaken, or more likely, lying. Roosevelt, as I said, kept his office at Sagamore Hill, and this was probably his secretary’s office. Anthony was being sold a bill of goods by a sharp realtor, who wanted to increase the value of the property. More interestingly, Anthony was totally buying it, the way people do who are more enthused than smart. If Frank was here, he’d smack his son on the head and say, “I got a bridge in Brooklyn I’ll sell you.”

Anthony went on, “Roosevelt could look out these windows and check out the broads.” He laughed, then speculated, “Hey, do you think he had a
comare
?”

I recalled that Frank used this word, and when I asked Susan, who spoke passable college Italian, what it meant, she said, “Godmother,” but that didn’t seem like the context in which Frank was using it. So I asked Jack Weinstein, Frank’s Jewish
consigliere
and my Mafia interpreter, and Jack said, with a smile, “It means, literally, ‘godmother,’ but it’s the married boys’ slang for their girlfriend or mistress. Like, ‘I’m going to see my godmother tonight.’ Funny.”

Hilarious. Here’s another example of how to use the word in a sentence: Frank had a
comare
named Susan.

Anthony asked, “Whaddaya think? You think he got blow jobs under his desk here?”

“I think the history books are silent on that.”

“Too bad. Anyway, I’ll get somebody to check with the local historical society about pictures of how this place looked when Roosevelt was here. We’re gonna reproduce that.”

Whether or not I wanted to work in a museum—I mean, whose office was this, anyway? In any case, a check with the Oyster Bay Historical Society would reveal to Anthony that Roosevelt didn’t actually work here. Following that, a check of the
Oyster Bay Enterprise-Pilot
obituaries would show a dead realtor.

He suggested, “We need a moose head on this wall.” He laughed, then led me into a smaller room, which looked the same as the bedroom, except it was even shabbier.

He said, “This is where your private secretary sits.” He further shared his vision with me and said, “You put a pull-out couch in here and get a little
fica
. Capisce?” He laughed.

How could this deal get any better? Sex, money, power, and even history.

There was a desk and file cabinet in this room, and I asked Anthony, “Who lived here?”

“A literary agent.” He added, “He got evicted, but the other tenants have leases, and I need to get them out.”

“Make them a fair offer.” Like, leave or die.

“Right. A good offer.” He led me into the small kitchen at the back of the apartment, and said, “We rip this out and make it the coffee room with a bar. So? What do you think?”

“I think this restoration will attract a lot of local press. Do you want that?”

“Good press for you. I’m a silent partner.”

“Not for long.”

“I know how to do this so my name never comes up. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“You’ve already spoken to the realtor, Anthony.”

“No. Anthony Stephano spoke to the realtor on the phone. And when the realtor gets here, my name is Anthony Stephano. Capisce?”

“People know your face.”

“Not like they knew my father’s face. I keep a low profile. The problem is the name, so we don’t use that name. And if anyone thinks my name is not Stephano, they’re not going to say shit. Right?”

I suggested to him, “If you used your real name, you could get the seller down to two million.”

He smiled. “Yeah? Why is that, John?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” I took a wild guess and said, “Maybe he’d be nervous.”

He smiled again. Clearly he enjoyed the power and the glory of being don Bellarosa, and the notion that men would quake in their boots while talking business with him.

On the other hand, I detected, or imagined, that there had been a subtle shift in the business practices of this organization in the last decade—or maybe it was Anthony’s style that seemed different from what I remembered when I was an honorary mobster.

In any case, what remained the same was me; these people did not intimidate me. I was, after all, John Whitman Sutter, and even the dumbest goombah knew that there was a class of people who they weren’t supposed to whack, which was why, for instance, U.S. Attorney Alphonse Ferragamo was still alive. The Mafia had rules, and they did not like bad press, or any press at all.

But even if there was no danger of getting whacked, there was always the danger of getting seduced, corrupted, or manipulated. I think that’s where I was now. But, I reminded myself, I was here not because of any moral failing on my part, or any further need to screw up my life for kicks—I’d already done that. It was because of Susan.

This lady, of course, would normally be at the very top of any Do Not Hit list, except for the fact that she clipped a Mafia don.
Whoops
.

So, what I needed to do was . . . what?

Anthony returned to the subject and said, “I’m a legitimate businessman. Bell Enterprises. What maybe happened in the past is over. But if people want to think—”

“Anthony. Please. You’re insulting my intelligence.”

He didn’t seem happy that I interrupted his nonsense, but he said, “I’m telling you what you want to hear.”

“I don’t want to hear bullshit. The best thing I can hear from you on that subject is nothing.”

He lit a cigarette, then said to me, “Okay.”

“What do you want from me? And why?”

He sat on the windowsill, took a drag, and said, “Okay, here’s the real deal—I spoke to Jack Weinstein, my father’s old attorney. You remember him. He likes you. And he tells me that I need to speak to you, which I did. He says you are the smartest, most honest, most stand-up guy he’s ever dealt with. And this coming from a smart Jew who stood up to my father when he had to. But always in my father’s best interest. And Jack tells me I need a guy like you. Just to talk to. Just to get some advice. Like Jack did for my father. Somebody who is not a paesano. Understand?”

“You mean, like a consigliere?”

“Yeah . . . that only means counselor. People think it means . . . like something to do with the . . . people in organized crime. It’s Italian for counselor. Lawyers are called counselor. Right?”