Authors: Nelson DeMille
“Right.” I thought, too, perhaps her mental state had changed. If good artists are crazy—and she
was
a good artist, and crazy—then a return to some degree of mental health might kill that spark of mad genius. That’s good and bad. Mostly, I think, good. I mean, I can live with a bad painting, but it’s not easy living with a crazy wife.
Anyway, I wondered if this new, improved tranquil personality I was now witnessing was the happy result of successful therapy or very good meds.
Susan said to me, “Now that I’m back . . . I should see if I’m inspired.”
“Right.” But don’t stop those meds.
Ironically, one of the best paintings she’d ever done, and probably the last, was of the ruins of Alhambra. Mrs. Sutter, on the occasion of our first visit to Alhambra for coffee and cannolis, generously offered to paint the Alhambra palm court as a housewarming gift to our new neighbors. Susan had photographs of the magnificent two-tiered atrium palm court as it existed before the Bellarosas restored the mansion, and she explained to them that she was going to paint it as a ruin. This surprised Mrs. Bellarosa, who wondered why anyone would want to paint what she called “a wreck.” But Mr. Bellarosa, recalling some art he’d seen in Rome, thought it was a swell idea. I, too, was surprised at this offer, because this was no small undertaking, and Susan rarely gave away any of her paintings, though she sometimes donated them for charity auctions. Susan had informed the Bellarosas that though she could work mostly from her photographs and from memory, she needed to set up her easel in the palm court, so she could get the right perspective, and take advantage of the shifting sunlight from the glass dome, and so forth. Frank assured her that the door was permanently open to her.
Thinking back on that evening, as I’d done a few dozen times, there was more going on here than a housewarming gift, or coffee and cannolis.
It was hard to believe, but Susan Stanhope Sutter and Frank the Bishop Bellarosa had connected like a plug in a socket, and I should have seen the lights going on in their eyes. But I didn’t, and neither did Anna, and we both remained clueless in the dark.
In any case, the relocation of the stable on Susan’s property, and the painting of the Alhambra palm court, led to frequent contact between Mrs. Sutter and Mr. Bellarosa.
Meanwhile, I was in the city a lot, and Anna spent a good deal of time being driven back and forth in the black Cadillac to Brooklyn, where she visited her family and stocked up on cannolis and olive oil.
I still don’t know who made the first move on whom, or where and how it happened, but I’m sure that Mr. Italian Stud thought
he
was the aggressor.
Susan continued with her last thought and said, “Most of the abandoned houses are either restored or razed now, but I still have a lot of old photographs that I could paint from.”
“Or maybe you should paint your parents and call it American Grotesque.” Well, I didn’t say that—I thought it. I said, “Paint the gatehouse before Nasim puts aluminum siding on it.” That may have actually been a Freudian slip—I mean, inviting her to set up her easel outside my house. Amazing how the subconscious mind works.
She replied, “That’s a good idea . . . with the wrought-iron gates.”
The subject of Susan’s artistic periods, past and present, seemed closed, and we continued our walk down memory lane. Then she changed subjects completely and asked me, “John, what are they saying in London about 9/11?”
I recalled my answer to Elizabeth on that question and replied, “They’re saying they’re next.”
She thought about that and observed, “The world has become a frightening place.”
I replied, “The world is a fine place, and most of the people in it are good people. I saw that on my sail.”
“Did you? That’s good.” She then said, “But what happened here . . . it has so changed everything for so many people.”
“I know.”
“Some people we knew were killed.”
“I know that.”
“Nothing will ever be the same for those families.”
“No, it won’t be.”
“What happened . . . it’s made a lot of people I know rethink their lives.”
“I understand that.”
“It made me appreciate things . . . I was frantic that day because Carolyn was downtown, and I couldn’t get a call through to her.”
“I know. Neither could I.”
She turned toward me as we walked, and said, “I thought you would call me that day.”
“I almost did . . . I did speak to Edward, and he said he’d gotten through to Carolyn on her cell phone, and she was all right, and he said he had called you and told you that.”
“He did . . . but I thought I’d hear from you.”
“I almost called.” I added, “I thought you’d call me.”
“I did, but when I called, I realized it was three A.M. in London, so I hung up, and the next day . . . I was drained and too . . . I was crying too much . . . so I e-mailed you . . . but I didn’t hear back from you.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s all right . . . but that . . . that horror made me think . . . there are terrible things that can happen to us out of the blue . . . for no reason. Just because we’re there, and something evil has come our way. It made me put a lot of things into perspective, and it was a wake-up call . . . and that’s when I began thinking about moving back here, and being close to people I grew up with, and . . . well, I began thinking about you.”
I didn’t respond for a while, then I said truthfully, “I had similar thoughts.” I mean, how long can we hold a grudge? Well, in my case, a long time. But 9/11 did get me thinking and possibly started me on the road that led me here, as it had led Susan here.
Susan continued her thought and asked, “How long can we stay angry at people we once loved in the face of such . . . real hatred and evil?”
That sounded like a rhetorical question, but it wasn’t, so I answered, “The anger is gone. Even the feeling of betrayal is gone. But what remains is . . . well, a badly wounded ego, and a sense of . . . embarrassment that this happened to me. In public.”
“And you haven’t gotten over that?”
“No.”
“Will you ever?”
“No.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No.”
She took a deep breath and said, “He’s
dead
, John. I
killed
him. For us.”
The time had come to confront this, so I replied, “That’s what you said.”
She stopped walking, and I did, too. We faced each other, and she said to me, “I was ready to go to jail for the rest of my life to give you back your pride and your honor. That was my public penance, and my public humiliation, which I did, hoping you would take me back.”
I hardly knew what to say, but I tried and said, “Susan . . . murdering a human being is
not
—”
“He was
evil
.”
Indeed, he was. But I didn’t think she realized that until he scorned her. Right up to that time, I think she was ready to run off with him to Italy, where the government was going to send him under the Witness Protection Program. I said to her, “You need to tell me
why
you killed him.”
“I just told you.”
I was seeing a little of the old Susan again, the bright green eyes, crazy eyes, and the pouty lips that morphed into a thin, pressed mouth, with her chin thrust forward as if to say, “I dare you to contradict me.”
Well, I needed to do that, and I said, “That’s what you may believe now, ten years later. But that is
not
why you killed him. Not for me, and not for us.”
She stared at me, and I stared back. I had confronted her with this once before, in the palm court of Alhambra, with Frank Bellarosa lying dead on the floor, and a dozen FBI agents and county detectives standing off to the side so that Mrs. Sutter, a homicide suspect, and her husband, who was also her attorney, could converse in private. And when I asked her then why she killed him, she gave me the answer I’d just gotten. I could have accepted that, and from there we could have possibly rebuilt our lives.
But that wasn’t the correct answer, and you can’t build on lies.
The correct answer, the truth, actually, was something far different than Susan’s stated motives for killing her lover. In fact, I have to take some blame for that, or some credit, if you look at it differently.
We continued to stare at each other, and I thought back to my visit to Frank Bellarosa at Alhambra, where he was lying in bed, sick with the flu, not to mention recovering from the after-effects of the shotgun blasts he’d taken some months before at Giulio’s restaurant.
This had not been my first visit, but it was to be my last, and a few days later, he’d be dead. He’d said to me, then, apropos of his offer on another occasion to do me any favor I wanted in exchange for me saving his life at Giulio’s, “Well, you got me wondering about that favor I owe you.”
I had thought long and hard about that favor, so I said to him, “Okay, Frank, I’d like you to tell my wife it’s over between you two and that you’re not taking her 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.”
He thought about that, then said, “Done.” But added, “I’ll tell her I used her, if you want, but that wasn’t it. You gotta know that.”
I
did
know that. I knew that, as impossible as it was to believe, Frank and Susan were in love, and she was ready to leave me for him. Lust, I understand, from firsthand experience. But the only woman I’ve ever loved, Susan Stanhope Sutter, who actually still loved me, was madly in love with Frank Bellarosa—and Frank, apparently, was in love with her.
That
was why he’d sold out to the Feds—so he and Susan could be together in Italy, or wherever, and start a new life together. It would probably have lasted a year or two, but people who are obsessed and in high heat don’t think that far into the future.
In any case, true to his word, he’d obviously told her what I’d asked him to tell her, on the phone or in person prior to that night, and Susan apparently snapped. Hell hath no fury and all that. Ironically, a few weeks before, he’d given her the gun that killed him, to keep the FBI from finding it. The rest is history, and tragedy, and maybe a little comedy, if you weren’t personally involved.
The question, of course, was this: Why did I ask Frank to tell Susan it was over, and that he was not taking her to Italy with him, and that he’d used her to recruit me as his attorney? Obviously, I did that to get Susan back—or to get back at Susan. And, of course, I had no idea that she’d snap and shoot him. Or did I?
I always thought that Frank Bellarosa, who was a great admirer of Niccolò Machiavelli, would have appreciated my . . . well, Machiavellian solution to this problem. And I still wonder if Frank grasped what he’d done to himself in those last few seconds between him telling Susan it was over and her pulling the gun. If he had any last words, or thoughts, I hoped they were, “John, you son of a bitch!”
Susan and I continued to face each other, and I returned to the present and looked into her eyes. She held my stare, then dropped her eyes and said to me, “I saw him earlier that day, and he told me that he was through with me, and he never loved me, and that his only interest in me was . . . fucking a society bitch . . . and . . . to make me convince you to work for him.” She took a breath and continued, “Then he told me to leave and not come back and not call him. But I went back that night . . . and we made love . . . and I thought it was all right again . . . but afterwards, he told me to leave, and I said I wouldn’t, so he said he’d call for the FBI to throw me out. I . . . couldn’t believe it, and I . . . became angry.”
I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t take my eyes off her. She seemed very calm, the way she is when she’s on the verge of an emotional breakdown, or a blow-up. I could never tell which it was going to be. Apparently, neither could Frank, or he’d have been on his guard. He should have at least remembered the gun.
She continued in a barely audible voice, “I told him I loved him, and that I’d given up my life for him. And he told me . . . he said, ‘Go back to John. He loves you, and I don’t.’ He said I’d be lucky if you took me back, and I should thank God if you did. And he called me . . . names . . . and told me to get out . . .”
I stood there, unable to say anything. I did, though, think about Frank Bellarosa, and I wondered how much he had loved her, and how hard it was for him to say what he’d said to her, which, I just discovered, was more than I’d asked of him. But he owed me a very big favor for saving his life at Giulio’s, and he wanted to be able to say to me, “We are even on favors, Counselor. Nobody owes anybody anything now.” But he didn’t live long enough to tell me we were even.
Susan moved a step closer to me, and we were only inches apart. She said, “And that’s why I killed him.” She asked me, “All right?”
I half expected to see tears running down her cheeks, but Susan is not much of a crier, though I did see her lower lip quiver. I said to her, “All right. He’s dead.”
We both turned and began our walk back to the house. One of us could have said something, but there was nothing left to say.
W
e walked through the rose garden to the patio. Somewhere along the way, Susan had dropped the rose stem, but the other roses sat on the table and she stared at them.
I was certain that after her confession, she expected me to leave, which I wanted to do, but I still needed to speak to her about Amir Nasim and Anthony Bellarosa, and I wanted to do that now in person, so I said to her, “I have something important to tell you.”
She looked at me, but didn’t respond.
I continued, “I’m sure you’d rather be alone now, but if you can sit and listen to me for about ten minutes . . .”
She replied, “If it’s important.”
“It is.” I suggested, “Why don’t we sit?”
“I need a few minutes. Would you like something?”
“Water.”
She went into the house, and I stood at the wicker table and opened the box she’d given me. Inside, as she said, were copies of letters from Edward and Carolyn, and also a stack of family photographs. I flipped through them and noticed a few group shots that included my parents and hers.