I opened the
Daily News
to a byline story and saw a small photo of Frank and a man who looked vaguely familiar. The caption read:
Bellarosa leaving courtroom with Attorney John Sutter.
Ah. I thought he looked familiar.
Bellarosa was reading the
Post.
He said, “Hey, listen to this.’’ He read, “‘In a move that surprised and even shocked veteran court observers, Bellarosa showed up at the arraignment with blue-blood lawyer John Sutter of Lattingtown, Long Island.’” Bellarosa looked at me. “You really got blue blood?”
“Of course I have.”
He laughed and went back to the story and read, “‘Sutter is the husband of Susan Stanhope Sutter, heiress daughter of a socially prominent Gold Coast family.’” He looked up at me again. “Does that mean your wife’s got blue blood, too?”
“Absolutely.”
Bellarosa scanned the article and said, “They got a lot of shit here on you, Counselor. Your law firm, your clubs, all that stuff.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeah? Where do you think they got all that shit so fast? Your pal Mancuso and scumbag Alphonse. Right? They’re really trying to stick it up your ass.”
And doing a rather nice job of it, I should say. Oh, well, what did I expect? When people like me step out of bounds, the government is right there to pounce, and the press eats it up. There are unwritten rules in this society, too, just like in Bellarosa’s society, and if you break the unwritten rules, you won’t get your bones broken, but you’ll get your life broken.
I looked again at the
Daily News
article and found my name. Here’s what the article did not say: “John Sutter is a good man, an okay husband, and a fairly good father. He served honorably in the U.S. Army, and is active in conservation efforts. He contributes thousands of dollars to charity, is a generous employer, and plays a good game of golf.”
Here is what the article did say: “Sutter himself has been under investigation by the IRS for criminal tax fraud.”
I thought I’d solved that problem. I guess it was a matter of verb tenses. Has been. Had been. Journalese was interesting. It was an art form. I wondered if I should write a letter to the editor or begin a lawsuit. Probably neither.
I poured myself a scotch and soda, and without wishing my fellow revelers good-night, I went into my bedroom and closed the door.
I saw my suitcase on the luggage rack and opened it. Susan had risen to the occasion and had done a nice job. She had packed my toilet kit, a gray suit, and a blue suit of summerweight wool. There were matching ties and pocket handkerchiefs and dress shirts. There was also enough underwear for about two weeks, which might have been a subtle hint.
As I unpacked, I saw an envelope with my name on it and opened it. It was a “Dear John’’ letter from Susan, which didn’t surprise me since my name is John. But I’m being flip. As I brushed my teeth in the bathroom, I read the letter, and here’s what it said:
Dear John,
You looked marvelous on television, though I’m not certain about the green tie with the blue suit. Or was the TV color off? You handled that bitchy female reporter quite well, I thought. I spent the day with Anna, who was very impressed with you and thanks you. I had to go home through the back way as there were reporters at the gates of both houses. How long will that nonsense last? Lots of messages on our answering machines, though I haven’t played any of mine yet. But there was a fax from your New York office asking you to call. Urgent. I wonder what that’s all about? What a break for Frank that you happened to see him on that day. Was I out riding with you? Call me tonight if you have a moment.
Love,
Susan
Well, that was vintage Susan Stanhope. Anna Bellarosa probably spent the whole day blubbering and wailing, and Susan spent the day arranging flowers. Well, look, this is the way people like us are. We
can
be passionate, affectionate, angry, sad, or whatever, but we don’t show much of it. I mean, what good does it do? It’s self-indulgent, and contrary to popular opinion, it doesn’t make you feel any better.
Still, Susan’s note was a bit
sangfroid
, to use a French expression. On the other hand, I hadn’t expected any note at all. I wonder if she wrote to Bellarosa.
I undressed, and as she hadn’t packed any pajamas, I went to bed in my underwear. No, I wasn’t going to call her.
I drank my scotch and listened to the muted murmur of Manhattan street sounds eight floors below. I still smelled that horrible fishy sauce and that garlic on my breath. No wonder Italy was the only country in Europe without vampire legends; they turned back at the Alps.
I may have drifted off for a while, but I woke up remembering that I had to tell Jimmy Lip that Fat Paulie wanted him to look at that place on Canal Street. More important, I had to tell Jimmy to lighten up on the chinks.
The phone rang and it was Susan, and I spoke to her, but in truth, I think it was a dream.
The phone rang again and it was Jenny Alvarez with an interesting proposition. I said to her, “Come on up. Tell Lenny or Vinnie it’s okay. I’m in the first bedroom to the left.”
Later I heard a knock on my bedroom door and she entered. I said to her, “If you like me, why were you so bitchy to me?”
“That’s my way.”
She took off her shoes, but not her red fuck-me dress, and crawled into bed beside me. What a tease. I wanted to kiss her but I was concerned about the anchovies and garlic on my breath.
I’m not sure what happened next, but when I woke up again before dawn, she was gone. Actually, I doubt she was ever there.
This elderly couple walked into my office and announced that they had not gotten along for about fifty years and they wanted a divorce. They looked as if they were around ninety—stop me if you’ve heard this—so I said to them, “Excuse me for asking, but why have you waited so long to seek a divorce?’’ And the old gentleman replied, “We were waiting for the children to die.”
Well, there are times when I feel the same way. Susan and I were reconciled yet again, and I had apologized for suggesting that her paternal origin was in question and that her mother was a whore. And even if Charlotte had once had hot pants, what difference did it make? But there was still the open question of whether or not her father was a monumental prick and so forth. I honestly believe he is, plus some. In fact, I even jotted down a few more descriptions of him in the event I ever saw him again. Susan, of course, knew what he was, which was why she wasn’t terribly upset with me; but William
was
her father. Maybe.
Anyway, I was still living rent-free in Susan’s house, and we were speaking again but not in complete or compound sentences.
I had been getting to bed early on Monday evenings, as per Mr. Bellarosa’s suggestion, rising early on Tuesdays and joining him for coffee at dawn. Susan hadn’t questioned me about my two early-Tuesday departures on foot to Alhambra, and as per my client’s instructions, I hadn’t told her about his imminent arrest.
The FBI knew now, of course, that I was Frank Bellarosa’s attorney, but my client did not want them to know that we had anticipated an early-Tuesday-morning visit. So, for that reason, I had to walk across our back acreage and approach Alhambra from the rear so as not to be seen from the DePauw outpost.
Incidentally, I had run into Allen DePauw a few times in the village, and with that profound lack of moral courage that is peculiar to rat finks, stool pigeons, and police snitches the world over, he did not snub me, but greeted me as though we were still buddies. On the last occasion that I ran into him, at the hardware store, I inquired, “Do you trust your wife alone with all those men at your house around the clock? Don’t you go to Chicago a lot for business?”
Instead of taking a swing at me, he replied coolly, “They have a mobile home behind my house.”
“Come on, Allen, I’ll bet they’re always coming inside to borrow milk while you’re away.”
“That’s not very funny, John. I’m doing what I think is right.’’ He paid for his machine gun oil or whatever it was and left.
Well, probably he was doing what he thought was right. Maybe it
was
right. But I knew that he was one of the people at the club who were making anonymous demands for my expulsion.
Anyway, in regard to Tuesday early
A
.
M
., even if the FBI came for Frank Bellarosa on another day, I was ready every morning to jump out of bed and be at Alhambra quickly. This was really exciting.
It was early August now, a time when I should have been in East Hampton. But Dr. Carleton, whoever the hell he was, was in my house with his feet on my furniture, enjoying East End summer fun and the instant respectability of an eighteenth-century shingled house. I’d spoken to the psychiatric gentleman on the phone once to get him squared away with the house, and he’d said to me, “What is your rush in going to closing, if I may ask?”
“My mother used to take money from my piggy bank and never replaced it. It’s sort of complicated, Doc. Next week, okay?”
So, I had that date out east and I needed the bucks for the Feds, but the other Feds across the street here wanted to bust my client and I had to stay on top of that, too. It was hard to believe that it was as recently as March when I’d had a safe, predictable life, punctuated only now and then by a friend’s divorce or a revealed marital infidelity and occasionally a death. My biggest problem had been boredom.
I had called Lester Remsen the day after the battle of McGlade’s and said to him, “Sell twenty thousand dollars’ worth of some crap or another and drop the check with my secretary in Locust Valley.”
He replied, “This is not the time to sell anything that you’re holding. Your stuff got hit harder than most. Hold on to your positions if you can.”
“Lester, I read the
Wall Street Journal
, too. Do as I say, please.”
“Actually, I was going to phone you. You have margin calls—”
“How much?”
“About five. Do you want me to give you an exact figure so you can send me a check? Or, if money is a little tight, John, I can just liquidate more stocks to cover the margin calls.”
“Sell whatever you have to.”
“All right. Your portfolio is a little shaky.”
This is Wall Street talk for, “You’ve made some very stupid investments.’’ Lester and I go back a long way, and even when we’re not speaking, we talk. At least we talk about stocks. I realized I didn’t like stocks or Lester. “Sell everything. Now.”
“
Everything
? Why? The market is weak. It will rally in September—”
“We’ve been talking stocks for twenty years. Aren’t you tired of it?”
“No.”
“I am. You know, Lester, if I had spent the last twenty years looking for Captain Kidd’s treasure, I would have lost less money.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“Close my account,’’ I said, and hung up.
Well, anyway, it was six
A
.
M
. on the first Tuesday in August, and I was brooding about this and that. In reality, even if Dr. Carleton wasn’t in my summer house, I wouldn’t be there this August, owing to the fact that my client next door wanted me to stick close. I suppose I could have moved into Alhambra, to be very close, but I don’t think the don wanted me around while he conducted business and consorted with known criminals. And I certainly didn’t want to be a witness to any of that.
So on that overcast Tuesday morning, I walked out of Susan’s house and began my cross-country trek in a good suit, carrying a big briefcase into which I would place five million dollars in cash and assignable assets with which to make bail.
I had examined all these assets one night at Bellarosa’s house in order to list and verify them. Thus, I saw a small piece of the don’s empire. Most of what I saw was recorded property deeds, which the court would accept. There were some bearer bonds and a few other odds and ends, together totaling about four million, which would meet even the most excessive bail. But to be certain, Bellarosa had dumped a shopping bag onto his kitchen table that contained a million dollars in cash.
As I was making my third trip to Alhambra in as many weeks, the birds were singing and the air was still cool. A ground mist sat about chest high on the fields between our property, and it was sort of eerie, as if I were going to Wasp heaven in my Brooks Brothers suit and briefcase.
I reached the reflecting pool with the statue of Mary and Neptune still glaring at each other, and a figure moved toward me out of the mist. It was Anthony, who was being taken for a walk by a pit bull. He barked at me. The dog, I mean. Anthony said, “Guh mornin’, Mistah Sutta.”
He must have a sinus condition. “Good morning, Anthony. How is the don this morning?”
“He’s ’spectin’ ya. I’ll walk ya.”
“I’ll walk myself, thank you.’’ I proceeded up the path to the house. Anthony was quite nice when you got to know him.