“Yes.”
“What?”
“Things.”
“Things? Like the recent outbreak of violence in Kurdistan?”
“Things around here. Just things.”
“Well, the children will be home in June, and in July I’ll be on half schedule, and in August we’ll go to East Hampton.”
She shrugged.
Remembering the immortal words of Frank Bellarosa on the subject of accommodating women, I said, “Why don’t you go back to Brooklyn?”
Anyway, I thought that with the stable moved and the horsies home at last, Susan’s visits to Alhambra would taper off, but I had the impression she was still there quite a bit. I mean, I’m not around that much during the day, but whenever I called home, she was not there, and my messages on the answering machine went unanswered.
Also, George, the ever-faithful servant, would sometimes intercept me on my way to my house and say things like, “Mrs. Sutter hasn’t been in all day or I would have asked her . . .’’ followed by an inane question. George is not subtle, though he thinks he is. Obviously, he disapproved of any relationship with the Bellarosas. George is more royal than the king, holier than the bishop, and a bigger snob than any Astor or Vanderbilt I’ve ever met. A lot of the old servants are like that, trying to make their younger masters and mistresses act more like their fathers and mothers, who were, of course, paragons of virtue, gentlemen and ladies of refined manners, and so forth. Servants have very selective memories.
The point is, George was not happy with us, and I knew that eventually, when he’d had a couple of stiff ones, he would say something to his cronies on the other estates, and the gossip would work its way up the social ladder. Well, if anything got back to me, I’d let George know how he’d kept his job and house all these years. No, I wouldn’t. I liked George. And he liked Susan and me. But he
was
a gossip.
As for Ethel, I couldn’t get a fix on her opinion of the Bellarosas or our relationship with them. She seemed noncommittal, almost nonjudgmental for a change. I suspect that this was because she couldn’t fit the Bellarosas into her theory of class struggle. Socialist doctrine, I think, is somewhat vague on the subject of criminals, and Ethel gets most of her opinions from nineteenth-century radicals who believed that the oppressive capitalist system created crime and criminals. So, perhaps Ethel was wrestling with the idea that Frank Bellarosa was a victim of free enterprise rather than one of its beneficiaries. If Ethel and I agree on anything, it is probably Mark Twain’s observation that “there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
Anyway, there was one day when I was in the city and I had to reach Susan to ask her if she could come into Manhattan to join me for dinner with two out-of-town clients, Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, who had dropped in unexpectedly, and who are old friends of her parents. I called home and left two messages on Susan’s machine, then as my rendezvous time with the Petersons approached, I called the gatehouse and spoke to Ethel. She informed me that Mrs. Sutter had taken Zanzibar to Alhambra in the morning and had not returned, to the best of her knowledge. So, what would you do if your gatekeeper’s wife informed you that your spouse had taken the stallion to the neighboring estate? One should, of course, send a servant to fetch one’s spouse, and this is what Ethel offered to do; that is, to send George next door. Or, she suggested, I might call Alhambra to see if Mrs. Sutter was actually there. I said it wasn’t important, though of course it must be if I were calling the gatehouse. I hung up with Ethel, called Susan’s phone again, and left a final, rather curt message regarding my dinner date and the name of the restaurant.
The fact was, I still didn’t have the Bellarosas’ phone number, and Susan said she didn’t either. I had noticed, when I was at Alhambra, and Susan confirmed, that none of the telephones there have the phone numbers written on the instruments. This was good security, of course, and I’d seen that in other great houses, as a precaution against the occasional servant, repairman, or the like jotting down the phone numbers of the rich and famous.
Late that evening, upon returning home after my dinner with the Petersons (Susan had not shown up at the restaurant), I said to Susan, “I was trying to get in touch with you today.”
“Yes, I got the messages on my machine and from Ethel.”
I
never
ask “Where were you?’’ because if I did, then she would start asking “Where were
you
?’’—which leads to “Who were you with and what were you doing?’’ What could be more lower-middle-class than asking your spouse to account for his or her day or evening? That’s probably how Sally Ann got her first black eye. But I did say, “I would like to be able to reach you if you are at Alhambra. Would you prefer that I send George over, or should you ask the Bellarosas for their telephone number?”
She shrugged. “I don’t have any reason to call them. I suppose you could just send George.”
I think Susan was missing my point. I responded, “George is not always available. Perhaps you can get the Bellarosas’ phone number, Susan. I’m sure you will have
some
reason to call them someday.”
“I don’t think so. I just come and go as I please. If I have to leave a message, I leave it with Anthony, Vinnie, or Lee.”
“Who, may I ask, are Anthony, Vinnie, and Lee?”
“You’ve met Anthony—the gatekeeper. Vinnie is the other gatekeeper. They both live in the gatehouse. Lee is Anthony’s friend. She lives in the gatehouse also. It has three bedrooms.”
“Lee is a woman. I see. And what does poor Vinnie do for a friend?”
“Vinnie has another friend, Delia, who comes by.”
The idea of Grace Lane’s location being known by people whose origins were in Brooklyn was somewhat disturbing. I was at the point where I could almost tolerate Mafia dons and their peers in black limousines, but hit men, gun molls, and other riffraff were another matter. I said, “I don’t like the idea of a bordello down the street.”
“Oh, John. Really. What do you expect Anthony and Vinnie to do? Guard duty gets lonely. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off, seven days a week. They split it up. Lee keeps house.”
“That’s interesting.’’ What was even more interesting, I thought, was that Lady Stanhope seemed to find these Damon Runyon characters
simpatico.
But I, narrow-minded, upper-middle-class John Sutter, was not so tolerant. I suggested, “Perhaps we should introduce Anthony, Vinnie, Lee, and Delia to the Allards, and they can exchange professional tips on gatekeeping.”
Getting no response, I went back to my main point and said, “But surely, Susan, on a dark and stormy night, it might be easier to call Alhambra than to go to the gatehouse and interrupt something.”
“Look, John, if you want the phone number, you ask for it. How were the Petersons?”
“They were very sorry they missed you.’’ The question of the telephone number was now in my court, where it would stay. Do you see what I mean about Susan’s unreasonableness?
Stubbornness
might be a better word. It’s the red hair. Really it is.
Anyway, regarding the Bellarosas’ phone number, I didn’t really want it, except for those rare occasions when I needed to reach Susan, who seemed to have become part of the royal court at Alhambra. But the fact that Bellarosa hadn’t called, written, sent word, or divulged his phone number to me confirmed in my mind that we had no lawyer/client relationship, either implied or inferred. And the next time he called me, I resolved that I would tell him that in no uncertain terms. Unfortunately, Fate, which had always been kind to me in the past, was pissed off at me for some reason and intervened again to push me into Bellarosa’s deadly embrace.
• • •
I was busy at work, especially in my Manhattan office. My practice has as much to do with money as it does with law. Or to be more precise, my clients want to know how to legally keep their money out of the hands of the government. This spirited contest between the taxpayer and the Internal Revenue Service has been going on since the very moment Congress passed the income tax amendment in 1913. In recent years, because of people like me, the taxpayer has actually won a few rounds.
The result of this prolonged conflict has been the creation of a large and thriving tax industry, of which I and my firm are important players. My clients are mostly people or heirs to people who were hit hard in 1929, and those who recovered faced income tax rates that reached ninety percent by the 1950s. Many of these people, sophisticated in other ways, were unprepared for the onslaught of income redistribution from Washington. Some, in an idiotic display of guilt and altruism, even saw it as just and fair, like Susan’s grandfather, who was prepared to give half his money to the American people. But when it got to be more than half, some of these socially progressive millionaires began to feel the pinch. It also became obvious that the few dollars of tax money that did get down to the people were getting to the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
And so, in a less sophisticated age, even those of my firm’s clients who knew how to make money in the worst of times didn’t know how to keep it from the government in the best of times. But they’ve seen the light, and they don’t intend for this to happen again, for this is the age of greed, and of looking out for Number One. And through a process of social Darwinism, we have all evolved into specialized species who can smell the danger of a new tax law hatched on Capitol Hill all the way to Wall Street.
These people, my clients, hire me to be certain that they are not going to go to jail if they or their financial planners come up with a clever way to beat a tax. It’s all legal, of course, and I wouldn’t be involved with it if it weren’t. The motto around here is this:
To evade taxes is illegal; to avoid taxes is legal.
And, I might add, a civil right and moral obligation.
So, for instance, when the new tax law swept away the old Clifford Trust for children, some bright guy like me (I wish it had been me) came up with something called a pseudo-Clifford Trust, which accomplished the same objective of transferring tax-free money to the little heirs and is so clever and complicated that the Internal Revenue Service is still trying to figure out a way to plug up the loophole. It’s a game—maybe even a war. I play it well, and I also play it clean and straight. I can afford to; I’m smarter than the other side, and if anyone in the IRS were as bright as I am, they’d be working for me.
Anyway, though I play it straight, I sometimes wind up in tax court with a client to settle a difference of opinion. But no client of mine has ever faced criminal charges for tax fraud unless he’s lied to me about something or held something back. I try to keep my clients as honest as I am. When you cheat at poker, life, or taxes, you’ve taken the honor and fun out of winning, and ultimately you’ve cheated yourself out of the finest pleasure in life: beating the other guy fair and square. That’s what I was taught in school.
Granted, the other side doesn’t always play fair, but in this country you always have the option of yelling “foul,’’ and going to court. Maybe if I lived in another country with no honest and independent judiciary, I wouldn’t fight fair. I am, after all, talking about survival, not suicide. But here, in America, the system still works, and I believe in it. At least I did up until eleven
A
.
M
. that morning. By noon, I had entered another stage of my life as an endangered species, trying to quickly evolve a few more specialized survival skills and stay out of jail myself. But more about that in a moment.
So there I was, sitting in my Wall Street office on that pleasant May morning, buried in work. My summer schedule generally consists of four-day weekends at my summer house in East Hampton during July, then I spend the whole month of August there. On the days in July that I do work in Manhattan or Locust Valley, I knock off early, and Susan and I sail out of the yacht club and stay out until dark, or when the mood strikes us, we stay on the water until dawn, which is beautiful.
Susan and I have six or seven really good sex scenarios for the boat. Sometimes I’m a shipwrecked sailor and Susan pulls me aboard, nearly naked, of course, and nurses me back to health. In the rough-trade department, I’m a pirate who slips aboard at night and finds her in the shower, or undressing for bed. Then there’s the stowaway drama in two acts, where I discover her hiding in the hold and administer appropriate corporal punishment as maritime law allows. I personally like the one where I’m a lowly deckhand and Susan is the yacht owner. She orders me around, sunbathes in the nude, and makes me perform demeaning acts, which I won’t go into here. The point is, I look forward to sex on the high seas, and so I run, run, run through the treadmill of spring, my arms outstretched toward the Glorious Fourth.
I know this sounds as if I take it pretty easy from the Fourth of July to Labor Day, but I earned it. Also, I use the time to do my own taxes, which I put on extended deadline every year.
I mention this because as I was sitting in my office thinking about my summer house and my taxes, my secretary, Louise, buzzed me. I picked up my phone. “Yes?”
“There is a Mr. Novac on the line from the Internal Revenue.”
“Tell him to call me in September.”
“He says it is most important that he speak to you.”