I turned my attention back to the television. The classical columns and crowded steps of the courthouse were gone, and the background was now gray stone. And there was Ms. Alvarez live, apparently recently returned from her engagement in lower Manhattan. In fact, she had changed from the morning’s neat suit and was now wearing a clingy, red fuck-me dress and holding a bulbous phallic symbol to her lips. But did she put it in her mouth? No. She spoke into it. “And this is Stanhope Hall. Or at least its walls and towering gates. And over there, right behind the gates, is the gatehouse where an old woman tried to shoo us away a little while ago.”
Funny, but I hadn’t recognized the place at first. It was odd that you could sometimes believe in the imagist world of television, but when the person or place was someone or something you knew personally, it didn’t look real; the perspective was wrong, the colors were off. The very diminution of size made the person or place nearly unrecognizable. But there it was: the gateway to Stanhope Hall on television.
Ms. Alvarez did ten seconds of travelogue, then said, “You can’t see the fifty-room mansion from here, but in that mansion live John Whitman Sutter and Susan Stanhope Sutter.”
This was not at all accurate, of course. Susan
had
lived in the mansion once, but had stepped down in the world. I’ll write to Ms. Alvarez.
Anyway, Jenny Alvarez went on about blue bloods, high society, Susan’s parentage, and all that nonsense, then she came to the point, which was, “Why would John Sutter, a respected and successful attorney with the old Wall Street firm of Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds, with rich and powerful friends and clients, defend Frank the Bishop Bellarosa on a charge of murder? What is the connection between these two men, between these two families? Did John Sutter, in fact, see Frank Bellarosa on the morning of January fourteenth when Alphonse Ferragamo charges that Bellarosa murdered Juan Carranza in New Jersey? Is that why Sutter chose to take on this case? Or is there more to it?”
There’s more to it, Ms. Snippy.
Bellarosa asked, “Where’d they get all that shit on you, Counselor?”
“I handed out press kits on myself.”
“Yeah?”
“Just kidding, Frank.”
Ms. Alvarez was still at it. Where she got all that shit was from Mr. Mancuso and/or Mr. Ferragamo. This was called payback time, aka “Fuck you, Sutter.’’ Thanks, boys.
Frank Bellarosa said, half jokingly, “Hey, who’s the fucking star of this show? Me or you? I didn’t know you were a big shot.”
I stood and walked toward my bedroom.
“Where you goin’?”
“The back’ouse.”
“Can’t you hold it? You’re gonna miss this.”
“I won’t miss it at all.’’ I went into my bedroom and into the bathroom. I peeled off my jacket and washed my hands and face. “Good Lord . . .’’ Well, aside from my personal reasons for being here, the fact remained that Frank Bellarosa was not guilty of the murder of Juan Carranza. “Not guilty,’’ I said aloud. “Not guilty.”
I looked in the mirror and held eye contact with myself. “You fucked up, Sutter. Oh, you really fucked up this time, Golden Boy. Come on, admit it.”
“No,’’ I replied, “I did what I had to do. What I wanted to do. This is a growing experience, John. A learning experience. I feel fine.”
“Tell me that in a week or two.”
I am the only man I know who can get the best of me in an argument, so I turned away before I said something I’d regret.
I dropped my clothes on the bathroom floor and stepped into the shower. Oh, that felt good. The three best things in life are steak, showers, and sex. I let the water cascade over my tired body.
By tomorrow morning, this story would be spread all over the newspapers. The
Daily News
, New York’s premier chronicle of the Mafia, would headline it, and so would the
Post. USA Today
would give it some play, and the
Wall Street Journal
, while not seeing any real news value to the story per se, would report it. My fear there was that they would decide that the story was not Frank Bellarosa, but John Sutter of Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds. In fact, they might massacre me. Woe is me.
And by tomorrow morning, anyone in Lattingtown, Locust Valley, or the other Gold Coast communities who had missed the story in the above-mentioned newspapers, or missed it on the radio, or somehow missed it on New York’s dozen or so TV news shows, could read it in the local Long Island newspaper,
Newsday
, with special emphasis on the local boy, John Sutter. I saw the headline:
GOLD COAST TWIT IN DEEP SHIT
. Well, maybe not in those words. But
Newsday
was a left-of-center sort of publication in a heavily Republican county, and they delighted in being antagonistic toward the nearly extinct gentry. They would have fun with this one.
I tried to imagine how this would sit with my partners, my staff, and my two secretaries when they discovered that Mr. Sutter had expanded the scope of Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds into criminal law. As the water flowed over my head, I had this mental image of my mother and father flipping through the
International Herald Tribune
, somewhere in darkest Europe, looking for depressing stories of famine and political repression, and stumbling upon an odd little article about Mr. Frank Bellarosa, Mafia gang leader in New York. Mother would say, “Isn’t that the fellow who lives next to our son, what’s-his-name?’’ And Father would reply, “Yes, I believe . . . well, look, here is a mention of John Sutter. That must be our John.’’ And Mother would say, “It must be. Did I tell you about that darling little café I saw yesterday in Montmartre?”
Of course my friends at The Creek would be somewhat more interested. I pictured Lester, Martin Vandermeer, Randall Potter, Allen DePauw, and a few others sitting around the lounge, nodding knowingly, or perhaps shaking their heads in stunned disbelief, or doing whatever they thought everyone else thought was appropriate, and Lester would say, “If only John had had more strength of character. I feel sorry for Susan and the kids.”
Jim and Sally Roosevelt, though, were real friends, and nonjudgmental people. I could count on them to tell me straight out what they thought and felt about me. Therefore, I would avoid them for about a month.
Then there were my relatives, my aunts and uncles such as Cornelia and Arthur, and my too many cousins, and their spouses, and the whole crew of silly people I had to associate with because of things like Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, weddings, and funerals. Well, Thanksgiving was three months away, I didn’t know about any upcoming weddings, and no one seemed about to croak (though after today I wouldn’t be surprised if Aunt Cornelia did). And if they all snubbed me, I wouldn’t care one whit, but they were more likely to pester me for details of my secret life as a Mafia mouthpiece.
And of course, there were Carolyn and Edward. I was glad I’d tipped them off about this, so when they heard it from other sources, they could say, “Yes, we know all about that. We support our father in whatever he does.’’ What great kids. Anyway, I guessed that Carolyn would be outwardly cool, but inwardly worried. That girl keeps everything in. Edward would start a scrapbook. But I’m not concerned about the judgment of children, my own included.
As for my sister, Emily, she had passed through her own midlife rejection of upper-middle-class values and had already reached the other side. I knew she would be there waiting for me when I arrived at my destination, and bless her, she wouldn’t want to know anything about my journey, only that I’d made it.
Ethel Allard. Now there was a tough call. If I had to put major money on that, I would say she was secretly pleased that another blue blood had been exposed as morally corrupt. Especially me, since she could never find a chink in my shining armor. I mean, I never beat my wife (except at her own suggestion), I didn’t owe money to tradesmen, didn’t use the gatehouse to screw women, I went to church, hardly ever got drunk, and I treated her reasonably well. “But,’’ she would ask, “what good have you done lately, Mr. John Sutter?’’ Not much, Ethel. Oh, well.
I’m only glad that George isn’t alive to see this, for surely it would have killed him. And if it didn’t, he would have annoyed me with his superior and disapproving attitude, and I would have killed him myself.
But, you know, there’s a bright spot even in a pile of horse manure. For instance, the Reverend Mr. Hunnings would be secretly and sneeringly happy that I was shown up for what I was: a gangster groupie who probably dealt drugs to support his alcohol habit. And I liked the idea that he was probably happy. I was happy that he was happy. I couldn’t wait to get to church next Sunday to put my envelope in the collection plate with a thousand dollars in it.
Then there were the women; Sally Grace Roosevelt, for one, who had found Susan’s description of don Bellarosa so interesting. And there was Beryl Carlisle, who I was sure now would peel off her damp pants the moment I walked into the room. And there were women like the delicious Terri, who would take me a little more seriously after this.
Ah, we’re getting a little closer to the crux of this matter, you say. Perhaps. Let’s discuss Charlotte and William Stanhope for one half-second: Fuck them.
Now on to Susan. No, I can’t
blame
her for what happened, for my being at that moment in the Plaza Hotel with a mobster, an accused murderer, and a man who had about two hundred people looking to kill him. I couldn’t blame her for my decision to be Bellarosa’s attorney. And I couldn’t blame her for the unwanted press attention she and I were both now getting and would continue to get until perfect strangers knew all about us. No, I couldn’t
blame
her. But you do see that it was mostly her fault.
I mean, no, not her
fault
, but sort of her responsibility. In a very small nutshell, it was like this: Susan thought Frank Bellarosa was interesting and, perhaps by inference, more of a man than her own husband. Her husband, who truly cares what his wife thinks of him, did not like that. Her husband is a jealous man. And her husband thinks he is every inch the man that Frank Bellarosa is. More of a man in many ways. But it doesn’t do a bit of good to say such a thing. You have to show it.
And so, when the opportunity to do so presented itself, ironically through the person of Frank Bellarosa himself, the husband, showing more ego than judgment, proceeded to ruin his life so he could show everyone a thing or two.
Did I have any regrets as of that moment? Not a one, really. In fact, I felt better than I’d felt in a long time. I knew I would.
I stepped out of the shower and dried myself off. In the misty mirror I drew a nice big smiling face. “Smile, stupid, you got what you wanted.”
• • •
It was a wild night. The phone rang nonstop, and people came and went. Obviously, the don was not in hiding, but had simply moved his court from Alhambra to the Plaza.
There were phone calls from the news media, too, and I suppose the word had gotten out via the hotel staff, or perhaps some of the invited guests. But Bellarosa was taking no calls from the press and told me not to make any statements until the morning. A few enterprising, not to mention gutsy, reporters had actually shown up at the door of the suite and were greeted by Vinnie, official gatekeeper for don Bellarosa, who had a funny line. “I’ll let ya in but ya ain’t gettin’ out.’’ No one accepted the invitation. But I could have sworn I heard Jenny Alvarez’s voice arguing with Vinnie.
Waiters set up a bar and brought food all night. The television was on constantly, tuned to an all-news channel that re-ran the Bellarosa story every half hour or so with a few variations. I could barely hear the television above the chatter, but I could see Bellarosa and Sutter walking down those courthouse steps every half hour.
Most of the men who arrived at the suite seemed to be vassals of the great
padrone
, captains and lieutenants in his own organization. They hugged and kissed him, and the lesser of them satisfied themselves with a handshake. A few older men actually bowed as they took his hand. Obviously, they were there to swear fealty to this man who was their don. Bizarre, I thought; this so-called empire of Bellarosa’s sort of reminded me of a medieval principality where none of the affairs of state or the rules of behavior were written down, but simply understood, and where oaths were binding on pain of death, and court intrigue was rampant, and succession to power was accomplished through a mixture of family blood, consensus, and assassination.
The men present were dressed in standard Mafia suits of blue, gray, and black, some with pinstripes. The suits could almost pass for Wall Street, but there was something subtly different about them, and the dress shirts ran mostly to shiny satin or silk, and the ties were drab monotones. There were lots of gold cuff links, expensive watches, even jeweled tiepins, and every left pinky in that room had a diamond ring, except mine.
The men around me spoke mostly in English, but every once in a while, someone would say something in Italian; just a line or two that I couldn’t understand, of course. I regretted that I’d wasted eight years in French class. I mean, what can you do with French? Insult waiters? I did get lucky in Montreal once, but that’s another story.
Anyway, not everyone who came to the Plaza suite was there to pay homage and swear loyalty. A few men showed up with their own retinues, men with unpleasant faces whose embraces and kisses were strictly for show. These were men who were there for information. Among them were the four whom Bellarosa had sat with at Giulio’s, and also the steely-eyed man who had come in later with the bodyguard. Bellarosa would disappear with these men into his bedroom, and they would emerge ten or fifteen minutes later, their arms around one another, but I couldn’t tell who screwed whom in there.