“Sure will.”
Lucio and his wife were not smooth like Patsy, but I tried to draw them out. “How long have you owned this place?”
Lucio replied, “It was my father’s restaurant, and his father’s restaurant.”
“Your grandfather was Giulio?”
“Yes. He came from the other side and opened his restaurant, right here.’’ He pointed to the floor.
“In what year?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe 1900.”
I nodded. A real slick entrepreneur would have made the most of that:
Giulio’s; family-owned on Mott Street since 1899.
(The last century always sounds better.) But I had the impression that Lucio was concerned only with the day’s fare and his customers’ satisfaction a meal at a time. Maybe that’s why he was successful, like his father and his father’s father.
The chef came out, complete with apron and chef ’s hat, which he removed prior to bowing to the don. Good Lord, you would have thought Bellarosa was a movie star or nobility. Actually, he was even more important than that; he was mafioso, and these people, mostly from Sicily and Naples, I suspected, had good ancestral memories.
We chatted a minute longer. They all could not have been friendlier, but nevertheless I felt a bit out of place, though not uncomfortable. Lucio and company could tell, of course, that I was an important person, but not an important Italian person. I felt actually like an American tourist in Italy.
Frank stood and I stood, and the chairs were pulled away for us. Everyone was grinning wider as they held their breaths. A minute more and they could all collapse on the floor.
I realized that the only thing missing from this meal was the bill. But then Frank took a wad of cash from his pants pocket and began throwing fifties around the table. He hit the chef with a fifty, Patsy with a fifty, and three waiters with a fifty each. He even called over two young busboys and slipped them each a tenner. The man knew how to take care of people. We all bid each other
buon giorno
and
ciao.
Lenny was already gone, and Vinnie was outside checking the street. I saw Lenny pull the Cadillac up in front of the restaurant, and Vinnie opened the rear car door while we were still inside the restaurant. Vinnie motioned through the glass door, and it was only then that Bellarosa exited the restaurant. I was right behind him but not too close. He slid into the backseat and I got in beside him. Vinnie jumped into the front and Lenny pulled quickly away. And this guy wanted to take the wives here? Get serious, Frank.
But maybe he was just taking normal precautions. I mean, maybe even when peace reigned in the regions of the underworld, Frank Bellarosa was just a careful man. Maybe I
would
take Susan here with the Bellarosas. Couldn’t hurt. Right?
We traveled south on Mott Street, which is one-way like all of the narrow streets in the old part of Manhattan.
Frank said to Lenny, “Plaza Hotel.”
Lenny cut west on Canal and swung north on Mulberry, driving through the heart of Little Italy. Bellarosa stared out the window awhile, recharging his Italian psyche. I wasn’t sure, but I suspected that he did not walk these streets freely; that like a celebrity, he saw most of the world through tinted car-windows. Somehow I felt sorry for him.
He turned to me and said, “I’ve been thinking. Maybe you had enough of this shit.”
Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. I didn’t reply.
He went on, “You did what I needed you to do. You got me sprung. You know? Jack Weinstein can take over from here. He knows how to deal with those scumbags in the U.S. Attorney’s office.”
“It’s up to you, Frank.”
“Yeah. This could get messy. You got a nice law practice, you got a nice family. You got friends. People are gonna bust your balls. You and your wife go take a nice vacation someplace.”
What a nice man. I wondered what he was up to. I said, “It’s your decision, Frank.”
“No, it’s your decision now. I don’t want you to feel pressured. No problem either way. You want, I’ll drop you off at the train station. You go home.”
I guess it was time for me to bail out or take an oath of loyalty. The man was a manipulator. But I already knew that. I said, “Maybe you’re right. You don’t need me anymore.”
He patted my shoulder. “Right. I don’t need you. I
like
you.”
Just when I think I’ve got this guy figured out, I don’t. So we went to the Plaza Hotel.
What I didn’t know was that half the Mafia in New York were going to show up that night.
The Plaza is my favorite hotel in New York, and I was glad that Frank and I shared the same taste in something, since I was apparently going to be there awhile.
We checked into a large three-bedroom suite overlooking Central Park. The staff seemed to appreciate who we were—or who Bellarosa was—but they were not as obvious about it as the
paesanos
at Giulio’s, and no one seemed particularly nervous.
Frank Bellarosa, Vinnie Adamo, Lenny Patrelli, and John Whitman Sutter sat in the spacious living room of the suite. Room service delivered coffee and sambuca, and Pellegrino water for me (which I discovered is an antidote for Italian overindulgence). By now it was twenty minutes to five, and I assumed we all wanted to catch the five-o’clock news on television. I said to Frank, “Do you want to call your wife before five?”
“Oh, yeah.’’ He picked up the telephone on the end table and dialed. “Anna? Oh . . .’’ He chuckled. “How you doin’ there? Didn’t recognize your voice. Yeah. I’m okay. I’m in the Plaza.”
He listened for a few seconds, then said, “Yeah. Out on bail. No big deal. Your husband did a terrific job.’’ He winked at me, then listened a bit more and said, “Yeah, well, we went for a little lunch, saw some people. First chance I had to call. . . . No, don’t wake her. Let her sleep. I’ll call later.’’ He listened again, then said, “Yeah. He’s here with me.’’ He nodded his head while my wife spoke to him, then said to her, “You want to talk to him?’’ Bellarosa glanced at me, then said into the phone, “Okay. Maybe he’ll talk to you later. Listen, we got to stay here a few days. . . . Yeah. Pack some stuff for him, and tell Anna I want my blue suit and gray suit, the ones I had made in Rome. . . . Yeah. And shirts, ties, underwear, and stuff. Give everything to Anthony and let him send somebody here with it. Tonight. Okay?. . . . Turn the news on. See what they got to say, but don’t believe a word of it. . . . Yeah.’’ He laughed, then listened. “Yeah. . . . Okay. . . . Okay. . . . See you later.’’ He hung up, then almost as an afterthought, he said to me, “Your wife sends her love.”
To whom?
There was a knock on the door, and Vinnie jumped up and disappeared into the foyer. Lenny drew his pistol and held it in his lap. Presently, a room service waiter appeared wheeling a table on which was a bottle of champagne, a cheese board, and a bowl of fruit. The waiter said, “Compliments of the manager, sir.”
Bellarosa motioned to Vinnie, who tipped the waiter, who bowed and backed out. Bellarosa said to me, “You want some champagne?”
“No.”
“You wanna call your wife back and tell her what you need?”
“No.”
“I’ll dial it for you. Here . . .’’ He picked up the telephone. “You go in your room for privacy. Here, I’ll get her.”
“Later, Frank. Hang up.”
He shrugged and hung up the phone.
Vinnie turned on the television to the five-o’clock news. I hadn’t expected a lead story, but there was the anchorman, Jeff Jones, saying, “Our top story, Frank Bellarosa, reputed head of the largest of New York’s five crime families, was arrested at his palatial Long Island mansion early this morning by the FBI. Bellarosa was charged in a sealed sixteen-count federal indictment in the murder of Juan Carranza, an alleged Colombian drug lord who was killed in a mob-style rubout on the Garden State Parkway on January fourteenth of this year.”
Jeff Jones went on, reading the news off the teleprompter as if it were all news to him. Where do they get these guys? Jones said, “And in a startling development, Judge Sarah Rosen released Bellarosa on five million dollars’ bail after the reputed gang leader’s attorney, John Sutter, offered himself as an alibi witness for his client.”
Jones babbled on a bit about this. I wondered if Susan recalled the morning of January fourteenth. It didn’t matter if she did or not, since I knew she would cover me so I could cover Frank Bellarosa. Oh, what tangled webs we weave, and so forth. Mr. Salem taught me that in sixth grade.
Jeff Jones was saying now, “We have Barry Freeman live at Frank Bellarosa’s Long Island estate. Barry?”
The scene flashed to Alhambra’s gates, and Barry Freeman said, “This is the home of Frank Bellarosa. Many of the estates here on Long Island’s Gold Coast have names, and this house, sitting on two hundred acres of trees, meadows, and gardens, is called Alhambra. And here at the main gates of the estate is the guard booth—there behind me—which is actually a gatehouse in which live two, maybe more of Bellarosa’s bodyguards.”
The camera panned in on the gatehouse and Freeman said, “We’ve pushed the buzzer outside there and we’ve hollered and shaken the gates, but no one wants to talk to us.”
The camera’s telescopic lens moved in, up the long driveway, and the screen was filled with a fuzzy picture of the main house. Freeman said, “In this mansion lives Frank the Bishop Bellarosa and his wife, Anna.”
I heard Frank’s voice say, “What the fuck’s this got to do with anything?”
Freeman went on for a while, describing the lifestyle of the rich and infamous resident of Alhambra. Freeman said, “Bellarosa is known to his friends and to the media as Dandy Don.”
Bellarosa said, “Nobody better call me that to my face.”
Vinnie and Lenny chuckled. Clearly they were excited about their boss’s television fame.
The scene now flashed back to Freeman, who said, “We’ve asked a few residents on this private road about the man who is their neighbor, but no one has any comment.’’ He continued, “We don’t think the don has returned home from Manhattan yet, so we’re waiting here at his gate to see if we can speak to him when he does.”
Bellarosa commented, “You got a long wait, asshole.”
Barry Freeman said, “Back to you, Jeff.”
The anchor, Jeff Jones, said, “Thanks, Barry, and we’ll get right back to you if Frank Bellarosa shows up. Meanwhile, this was the scene this morning at the Federal Courthouse in lower Manhattan. Jenny Alvarez reports.”
The screen showed the videotape of that morning: Frank Bellarosa and John Sutter making their way down the steps of the courthouse as savage reporters yelled questions at us. My blue Hermès tie looked sort of aqua on camera, and my hair was a bit messy, but my expression was a lawyerly one of quiet optimism. I noticed now that the snippy female reporter who had given me a hard time on the lower steps was on my case even then as we first left the courthouse, but she hadn’t really registered in my mind at the time. I saw, too, by her microphone, that the station I was watching was her station. I guess that was Jenny Alvarez. She was yelling at me, “Mr. Sutter? Mr. Sutter? Mr. Sutter?”
Obviously, she had been fascinated by me the moment she laid eyes on me. Actually, she wasn’t bad-looking herself.
But neither Frank nor I had said much as we descended the steps, and the scene shifted to the lower steps where we got stuck for a while. And there was Great Caesar, with the majestic classical columns of the courthouse behind him, puffing on his stogie, wisecracking and hamming it up for the cameras. I hadn’t noticed when I was there, but from the camera’s perspective, I could see a line of federal marshals on the top steps of the courthouse, including my buddy, Wyatt Earp.
Frank commented to the three of us, “I gotta lose some weight. Look how that jacket’s pulling.”
Vinnie said, “You look great, boss.”
Lenny agreed, “Terrific. Fuckin’-ay-terrific.”
It was my turn. “You could drop ten pounds.”
“Yeah? Maybe it’s just the suit.”
I turned my attention back to the television. You could hear a few questions and a few answers, but mostly it was just entertainment, a street happening, impromptu theater. Then, however, Ms. Snippy’s cameraman got a close-up of her bugging me again. “Mr. Sutter, Mr. Ferragamo has five witnesses who put Frank Bellarosa at the scene of the murder. Are you saying they’re all liars? Or are
you
the liar?”
And stupid John replied, “Ferragamo’s witnesses are liars, and he
knows
they are liars. This whole thing is a frame-up, a personal vendetta against my client, and an attempt to start trouble between—”
“Trouble between who?’’ asked Ms. Snippy. “Rival mobs?”
And so it went.
Frank didn’t say anything, but I had the feeling he wished this wasn’t going out over the air to Little Italy, Little Colombia, Little Jamaica, Chinatown, and other quaint little neighborhoods where exotic people with big grudges, big guns, and extreme paranoia might decide to engage in what was called a drug-related murder.