I ordered another beer and six of those beef jerky sticks for dessert. Just when it seemed that no one was interested in me or offended by my presence, one of the leather gentlemen at the bend in the bar inquired, “You live around here?”
You have to understand that even in jeans and sweatshirt, unshaven, and with a Bronco outside, John Whitman Sutter was not going to pass for one of the boys, especially after I opened my preppie mouth. You understand, too, that there was deeper meaning in that question. I replied, “Lattingtown.”
“La-di-da,’’ he responded musically.
I’m honestly glad there is no class animosity in this country, for if there were, the leather gentleman would have been rude.
He asked, “You lost or what?”
“I must be if I’m in this place.”
Everyone thought that was funny. Humor goes a long way in bridging the gap between men of culture and cretins.
Leather said, “Your old lady kick you out or what?”
“No, actually she’s in St. Francis Hospital in a coma. Hit-and-run. Doesn’t look good. The kids are with my aunt.”
“Oh, hey, sorry.’’ Leather ordered me a beer.
I smiled sadly at him and went back to my beef jerky sticks. They’re actually not bad, and if you chew them with a mouthful of bar nuts, it forms this pasty mass that absorbs beer. You swallow the whole wad. I learned that in New Haven. That’s the way we say Yale. New Haven. It doesn’t sound so snooty.
I was due at Aunt Cornelia’s for cocktails at three, as the note said. It was sort of a family reunion that we do every Easter at Aunt Cornelia’s home, which is in Locust Valley, about a fifteen-minute drive from here. It was now a few minutes to two. Aunt Cornelia is my mother’s sister, and she is the aunt, you may recall, who has some theories regarding red hair. Wait until she sees her favorite nephew, I thought, staggering in without tie or jacket, unshaven, and smelling of beer and bar nuts.
Susan, to be fair, is good with my family. Not close, just good. Her family are few in number, not close to one another, and scattered far and wide. Perfect in-laws.
Anyway, as I was contemplating another hour in this hole, a woman took the empty stool beside me. She must have come from the dark recesses, because the front door hadn’t opened. I glanced at her and she gave me a big smile. I looked in the bar mirror, and our eyes met. She smiled again. Friendly sort.
She was about thirty but could have passed for forty. She was divorced and was currently living with a man who beat her. She worked as a waitress somewhere, and her mother took care of her kids. She had a few health problems, should have hated men, but didn’t, played the Lotto, and refused to accept the fact that life was not going to get any better. She didn’t say any of this, she didn’t say anything, in fact. But the sort of people you find in The Rusty Hawsehole are like those fill-in-the-adjective games. You wonder sometimes how a fabulously wealthy nation can create a white underclass. Or maybe it’s just that some people are born losers, and in the year 3000 in a colony on Mars, there will be a Rusty Hawsehole whose clientele will have bad teeth, tattoos, and leather space suits, and they will tell each other their life stories and complain about bad breaks and people screwing them. I heard two shoes hit the floor.
“My feet are killing me.”
“Why is that?’’ I asked.
“Oh, jeez, I worked all morning. Never even got to Mass.”
“Where do you work?”
“Stardust Diner in Glen Cove. You know the place?”
“Sure do.”
“I never saw you there.”
And you never will. “Buy you a drink?”
“Sure. Mimosa. Hate to drink before six. But I need one.”
I motioned to the bartender. “Mimosa.’’ I turned to my companion. “You want a beef jerky?”
“No, thanks.”
“My name’s John.”
“Sally.”
“Not Sally Grace?”
“No, Sally Ann.”
“Pleased to meet you,’’ I said.
Her mimosa came and we touched glasses. We chatted for a few minutes before she asked, “What are you doing in a place like this?”
“I think that’s
my
line.”
She laughed. “No, really.”
I suppose I was flattered by the question, my ego stroked by the knowledge that no one in that bar thought I belonged there even before they caught the accent. Conversely, I suppose, if any of these people were in The Creek, even in tweeds, I’d ask the same question of them. I replied to Sally, “I’m divorced, lonely, and looking for love in all the wrong places.”
She giggled. “You’re crazy.”
“And my clubs are closed today, my yacht is in dry dock, and my ex-wife took the kids to Acapulco. I have my choice of going to a Mafia don’s party, my aunt Cornelia’s house, or here.”
“So you came here?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“No. I’d go to the Mafia don’s party.”
“That’s interesting.’’ I asked, “Are you by any chance a Roosevelt?’’
Roozvelt.
She laughed again. “Sure. Are you an Astor?”
“No. I’m a Whitman. You know Walt Whitman, the poet?”
“Sure.
Leaves of Grass
. I read it in school.”
“God bless America.”
“He wrote that, too?”
“Possibly.”
“You’re related to Walt Whitman?”
“Sort of.”
“Are you a poet?”
“I try.”
“Are you rich?”
“I was. Lost it all on Lotto tickets.”
“God, how many did you buy?”
“All of them.”
She laughed yet again. I was on. I swung my stool toward Sally. You could tell she had been attractive once, but the years, as they say, had not been kind. Still, she had a nice smile and a good laugh, all her teeth, and I’m sure a big heart. I could see she liked me and with a little encouragement would have loved me. A lot of my schoolmates were into fucking the poor, but I never did. Actually, I take that back. Around here, the local custom is that Wednesday night is maid’s night out, and all the young bars on the Gold Coast were, and still are, I guess, filled with delicious Irish and Scottish girls over here on work visas. But that’s another story. The point is, it’s been a long time since I’ve been tête-à-tête with a working girl in a bar, and I wasn’t quite sure how to act with Sally Ann. But I believe I should always be myself. Some people like twits. And besides, I was doing better with Sally Ann than with Sally Grace. And now, as of sunrise, I had the power. We chatted awhile longer, and she was giggling into her third mimosa, and the leather crew were starting to get suspicious about the wife-in-the-coma story.
I caught a glimpse of the bar clock, which informed me that it was Miller time and three
P
.
M
. Given the choice between taking Sally Ann back to her place or going to Aunt Cornelia’s, I’d rather do neither. “Well, I should go.”
“Oh . . . you in a hurry?”
“I’m afraid I am. I have to pick up the Earl of Sussex at the train station and get over to Aunt Cornelia’s.”
“Seriously . . .”
“Can I have your number?”
She demurred for half a second, then smiled coyly. “I guess. . . .”
“Do you have a card?”
“Uh . . . let me see. . . .’’ She rummaged through her bag and found her short stub of a waitress pencil. “You want it on a card?”
“A napkin will do.’’ I pushed a dry one toward her, and she wrote her name and number on it. She said, “I live here in Bayville. I can see the water from my place.”
“I envy you.’’ I put the napkin in my pocket with the shotgun shell. I might start a scrapbook. I said, “I’ll call you.’’ I slid off the bar stool.
“I’m on nights for the rest of the month. Five to midnight. I sleep when I can. So try anytime. Don’t worry about waking me. I have an answering machine anyway.”
“Got it. See you.’’ I left my change on the bar and exited The Rusty Hawsehole into the bright sunlight. There must be some place in this world for me, but I didn’t think The Rusty Hawsehole was going to make the short list.
I climbed into my Bronco. I had my choice now of don Bellarosa’s or Aunt Cornelia’s. I headed south along Shore Road, hoping, I guess, for some sort of divine intervention, like brake failure.
Anyway, I found myself on Grace Lane and passed Stanhope Hall, whose gates were closed. The Allards, I suppose, were at their daughter’s house, and Susan was already at my aunt’s or, more interestingly, at Frank’s house, eating sheep’s nose and putting out a contract on me.
I continued on and reached the beginning of the distinctive brick-and-stucco wall of Alhambra. I slowed down, then pulled off onto the shoulder opposite Alhambra’s open gates. The two men in black suits were still there and they stared at me. Behind them, at the gatehouse, which was built into and part of the estate wall, was the Easter bunny. He was a rather large bunny, about six feet tall, not counting ears, and he held a big Easter basket, which I suspected was filled with colored hand grenades.
I turned my attention back to the bunny’s two helpers, who were still eyeing me. I had no doubt that one or both of these men—don Bellarosa’s soldiers—had been pursuing me that morning.
Alhambra’s main entranceway, unlike Stanhope’s, is a straight drive to the main house, which you can see perfectly framed by the wrought-iron gates and pillars. The drive itself is paved with cobbles instead of gravel, and it is lined with stately poplars. On the drive now, stretching all the way to the house, were automobiles mostly of the long, black variety, and it occurred to me that these people with their black cars and black clothes were ready for a funeral at a moment’s notice.
Looking at the scene across the street, I suspected that Frank Bellarosa knew how to throw a party. And I had the feeling that he did so in a manner that was in unconscious imitation of a Gatsby party, with everything a guest could want except the host, who watched his party from a distance.
In some bizarre way, Bellarosa’s ostentatious Easter was a case of history repeating itself, according to the stories that are told of millionaires in the 1920s trying to outdo one another in bad taste. Otto Kahn, for instance, one of the richest men in the country, if not the world, used to hold Easter egg hunts on the six hundred acres surrounding his 125-room mansion in Woodbury. Guests included socialites and millionaires as well as down-and-out actors, writers, musicians, and Ziegfeld girls. To make the hunt interesting, each colorfully painted egg contained a one-thousand-dollar bill. This was a popular event and an original way to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I know in my heart that I would not have gone to Kahn’s estate for the thousand-dollar bills—about a year’s salary for some people in the 1920s—but I might have been tempted by the Ziegfeld girls.
Similarly, while sheep’s head didn’t make my mouth water, curiosity about Frank Bellarosa, his family, and extended “family’’ was getting the better of me. While I was weighing the pros and cons of passing through those gates, I noticed that one of the cons, obviously tired of keeping an eye on me, was motioning me to move on. As I am a shareholder in Grace Lane and was not interfering with Mr. Bellarosa’s party in any way, I rolled down my window and gave the man what is sometimes known as the Italian salute.
The man, apparently overjoyed at my familiarity with Italian customs, returned my salute energetically with both hands.
About this time, a limousine with dark windows came up beside me, then turned left into the gates and stopped. The windows went down, and one of the guards checked the passengers while the big bunny handed out goodies from his basket.
I heard a sharp tap on my passenger-side window and turned quickly. A man’s face peered through the window, and he was motioning me to roll it down. I hesitated, then reached over and cranked down the window. “Yeah?’’ I said in my best tough guy voice. “Whaddaya want?’’ I felt my heart speed up.
The man pushed his hand through the window and held out one of those badge cases with an ID photo in front of my face, then pushed the face to match through the window. “Special Agent Mancuso,’’ he said. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Oh . . .’’ I took a deep breath. This was really too much, I thought. Unreal. Right here on Grace Lane. Mafia, six-foot Easter bunnies, errant husbands, and now this guy from the FBI. “What can I do for you?”
“You are John Sutter, correct?”
“If you’re the FBI, then I’m John Sutter.’’ I assumed they’d run my license plate through Albany in the last few minutes, or perhaps months ago when Bellarosa had moved in.
“You probably know why we’re here, sir.”
A few sarcastic replies passed through my mind, but I answered, “I probably do.”
“Of course you have every right to park here, and we have no authority to ask you to move.”
“That’s right,’’ I informed him. “This street is private property. My property.”