I shook my head. “Not everyone thinks like you do. Why don’t you give the guy credit for just doing his job? He thinks you killed somebody.”
“Bullshit.’’ He leaned back and twirled his glass.
“I have to go.”
“No. Just sit there.”
“Excuse me?”
He looked at me and I looked back. I finally saw don Bellarosa for a second or two. But then Frank was sitting there again. It must have been the light. He said, “Let me finish, Counselor. Okay? You’re a smart guy, but you don’t have the facts. Hey, I don’t care if you think I hit this Colombian guy. But there’s two, three, four sides to everything. A smart guy like you sees two sides, maybe three. But I’ll show you another side, so when you walk out of here, you’ll be a better citizen.’’ He smiled. “Okay?”
I nodded.
“Okay. So when those assholes in Washington made Ferragamo the U.S. Attorney here, they knew what they were doing, for a change. They got it all figured out, those smart guys in the Justice Department. They want the Colombians to hit me, then my friends start hitting the Colombians, and the undertakers are happy, and the Feds are happy. The
melanzane
are not happy because now they have to go back to cheap wine because the white stuff is cut off while the stiffs are piling up. Understand? This talk make you uncomfortable?”
“No—”
“So the next time you talk to Mancuso out there, you tell him what I just told you. Mancuso is okay for a cop. He’s got nothing against me personally, and I got nothing against him. We treat each other with respect. He believes in the law. I respect him for that even if it’s stupid. He don’t want a shooting war out there on the streets. He’s a very responsible man.”
“You want me to pass on this conversation to Mancuso?”
“Sure. Why not? Let him go to Ferragamo and tell him that Bellarosa is onto his game.”
“You’ve been reading too much Machiavelli.”
“You think so?”
“Are you suggesting that not only Ferragamo, but the U.S. Attorney General and the Justice Department in Washington are in on a conspiracy to have you murdered and provoke a gang war?”
“Sure. Why do you think Alphonse is still here? It’s so fucking obvious what he’s up to with this Carranza shit. If Justice don’t yank the guy out of here or tell him to cool it, then Justice is in on it. Right?”
“Your logic—”
“Then with the two biggest players blasting away at each other, the Feds take care of the Jamaicans and the other
melanzane
down there in the islands. Then they go for the Asians. Divide and conquer. Right?”
I shrugged. “I do house closings.”
“Yeah. Let’s say you buy what I’m saying. How do you feel about it as a good citizen?”
What I felt was distressed to think that the forces of law and order in this country were so desperate that they had to stoop to Bellarosa’s level to get rid of Bellarosa. But I said, “As a good citizen, I would be . . . angry to think the government would provoke a dangerous gang war.”
“Sure. But you kinda like the idea. Right? The spics and the wops finally knocking each other off?”
“No.”
“Bullshit.”
“No comment.’’ I asked, “Why don’t you go to the newspapers if you believe what you’re saying?”
He laughed. “Sure.”
“They’d print it.”
“You bet your ass they would. They print it when I fart. But you don’t go public with your problems in my business. You shoot your mouth off to the press, and you piss off
everybody
, including your friends who don’t even admit there’s such a thing as the Mafia. You start talking to the press about your enemies, and your friends will kill you.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re a lawyer.”
“I’m not
your
lawyer.’’ I added, “Anyway, it’s not a lawyer you need. You need bodyguards.’’ Or a psychiatrist.
“Yeah. But I need some outside advice. I listened to my friends, my counselors, to Jack Weinstein. Now I want to hear from somebody who sees things different from the people around me.”
“You want my advice? Retire. Go to Sorrento.”
“You don’t retire in the business. Did any of the Caesars retire? You can’t set everything straight with the people you pissed off, you can’t raise the dead, you can’t go to the government and say, ‘I’m sorry, and I’m paying the taxes I cheated on and giving back all the businesses I bought with the illegal money.’ You can’t let go of the tiger, because he’ll turn and eat you. You got to stay on the tiger and keep the power in your hands.”
“No. You can go to Sorrento.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I like what I do. Keeps me busy.”
“You like the power.”
“Sure. Sorrento is for when I’m old. When I’m tired of power, business, women. I got a few years yet.”
“Maybe not.”
He looked at me. “I don’t run. The spics are not running Frank Bellarosa off. The Feds are not running Frank Bellarosa off.
Capisce?”
“Now I do.”
We both sat there a few minutes. I had the impression he was waiting for me to say something, to come up with some advice. As an attorney, I’m in the advice business, but I’m not predisposed to giving free and friendly advice. I said, “Are we finished?”
“Almost. Here’s the thing. Ferragamo can’t be shooting his mouth off to the press that I’m a suspect in the murder of Juan Carranza, and let it go like that. Right?”
“Right.”
“He’s got to follow up with a grand jury investigation.”
“Correct.”
“So, what I’m thinking is I want you to handle this for me.”
“If I wouldn’t handle a real estate deal for you, why would I represent you in a criminal matter?”
“Because one thing is money, the other is justice.”
He didn’t choke on that last word, but I almost did. I shook my head. “I don’t handle criminal matters. I’m not qualified.”
“Sure you are. You’re a lawyer.”
“What kind of evidence is Ferragamo going to present to a grand jury to get you indicted?”
“He don’t have shit. But you ever hear that expression—‘a New York grand jury will indict a ham sandwich’? You hear that?”
“Yes.’’ New York grand juries are sort of like Star Chambers; twenty-three upright citizens sit in secret sessions, and the person under investigation is not present and neither is his attorney. So, without any evidence except what is presented by the government, the grand jury usually votes to indict. It was a safe bet to say that Frank Bellarosa would be indicted. I said, “You think Ferragamo is just harassing you with this indictment?”
“Yeah. A regular jury won’t convict me, because Ferragamo’s got no evidence for them. So Frank Bellarosa versus the United States is not getting to trial. But meanwhile, Ferragamo’s calling press conferences. He loves fucking press conferences. He’s telling everybody that the Mafia is pushing out the Colombians, the Jamaicans, blah, blah, blah. That’s bullshit. We all got our own thing. Then he says, ‘Bellarosa personally hit Juan Carranza to show them spics a lesson!’ Understand? So the Colombians get their balls in an uproar—they get all macho. Christ, they’re worse than Italians. Now they want to settle this
mano a mano.
Carranza was a big man with them. Okay, so now I got to worry about my own people, too. Understand? Because they don’t want a fucking bloodbath, because they’re all fat and soft. The South Americans are hungry and hard. They’re the new guys and they work harder. They don’t have the fucking brains they were born with, but they manage to get things done. Okay, maybe they’re too stupid to get at me. You know? So what do they do? They go to my friends and they say, ‘Hey, let’s settle this before Frank goes to trial, before people start getting hurt. We all got enough problems and we don’t need this shit with Bellarosa.’ So maybe my guys say, ‘We’ll take care of Frank.’ You see? The sons-of-bitches would give me up to save their own asses. Even though they know I didn’t hit Carranza. Ten, twenty years ago, an Italian would say to a spic, ‘Fuck you. Get out of here before I feed you your balls for lunch.’ But things are different now. There’s a whole new world out there. Understand?”
That, I understood. Now I discover that even the Mafia are having trouble adapting to this new New World. I said, “That’s absolutely fascinating, Frank. And I don’t really see any way out for you.”
He laughed. “Maybe something will come into your head. I need a very upright lawyer to go talk to Ferragamo. He’s the key. He’s got to call one of his press conferences and say that he has new evidence about who hit Carranza, or say he’s got no evidence at all. You talk to him about that.”
“But maybe I don’t believe your side of this.”
“You will when you see Ferragamo’s face after you tell him I know what he’s up to.”
Bellarosa, I realized, was a man who believed in his instincts. He would not need hard evidence, for instance, before he ordered the murder of someone he suspected of disloyalty. Like a primitive tribunal, all that Bellarosa required was the look of guilt, perhaps a word or phrase that seemed somehow wrong. And in the case of Alphonse Ferragamo, Frank Bellarosa first figured out a motive, then presumed the man guilty of the crime. I don’t deny the value of instinct—I hope I use my instincts in court, and police use instinct every day on the streets. But Frank Bellarosa, whose good instincts had kept him free and alive, perhaps put too much faith in his ability to spot danger, tell friends from enemies, and to read people’s minds and hearts. That was why I was sitting there; because Bellarosa had sized me up in a few minutes and decided I was his man. I wondered if he was right.
Bellarosa continued, “The New York State Attorney General, Lowenstein, don’t even want a piece of this case. I hear from some people close to him that he thinks it’s bullshit. What’s that tell you, Counselor?”
“I’m not sure, and I still don’t do criminal work.”
“Hey, you might have fun. Think about it.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Good.’’ He settled back in his chair. “Hey, I’m doing that real estate deal next week. I got that firm in Glen Cove you said. They gave me this guy Torrance. You know him? He any good?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I don’t want no screwups.”
“Real estate contracts and closings are fairly simple if you pay attention to detail.”
“Then you should’ve done it, Counselor.”
I regarded Bellarosa a moment. I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or just considered me a fool. I said, “We’ve been through that.”
“Yeah. But I want you to know you’re the first guy who ever turned down that kind of money from me.”
“That’s discouraging.”
“Yeah? Well, people have turned down outright bribes. But never a legitimate fee. It was legit.”
“We’ve been through that, too.”
“Yeah. About the grand jury thing, I know you don’t drop for money, but I’ll pay you a flat fifty for talking to Ferragamo and another fifty if a grand jury isn’t convened.”
“If I did criminal work, I’d get three hundred an hour, double for courtroom time. I don’t take cash rewards if you’re not indicted or convicted, and I don’t give the money back if you are.”
Bellarosa smiled at me, but it was not a nice smile. “I gotta tell you, some of your wisecracks are funny, some are not.”
“I know.”
“You got balls.”
“I know that, too.”
He nodded. “I got too many guys around me kissing my ass, and any one of them would stick a knife in my back.”
“I feel sorry for you.”
“Hey, it’s part of life.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“My life. But I also got guys around me who respect me. People who don’t kiss my ass, but kiss my hand.”
“Does anybody
like
you?”
He smiled. “I don’t really give a shit.”
“Work on that, Frank.”
He looked at me and said, “Something else I gotta tell ya. Your people been here three hundred years you said. Right? So you figure everybody who got here after you is uninvited company or something. But my family in Italy goes back a thousand years in that town outside Sorrento. Maybe they go back two thousand years to Roman times. Maybe one of my ancestors was a Roman soldier who invaded England and found your people wearing animal skins and living in mud houses.
Capisce?”
“I understand enough history to appreciate the glory of Italian civilization, and you may well take pride in that heritage. But what we’re discussing at the moment, the Mafia, is not one of Italian civilization’s greatest contributions to Western culture.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“Well, it’s most people’s opinion.”
Bellarosa seemed deep in thought for a full minute, then said, “Okay. Now you got to make a big decision, because you’re jerking me around and yourself around. So you stand up, you turn around, and you go out that door. You get your wife and you leave, and you’ll never hear from me again. Or, you have a drink with me.”