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 neighbour, 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 video tape 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 Hermes 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 theatre. 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 neighbourhoods where exotic people with big grudges, big guns, and extreme paranoia might decide to engage in what was called a drug-related murder.
I turned my attention back to the television. The classical columns and crowded steps of the courthouse were gone, and the background was now grey 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 colours 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 lives 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, Counsellor?"
"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-centre 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.