"Right?"
He stuck out his fat, sweaty hand. "Paulie."
We shook and I said, "Johnny. Johnny Sutta."
"Yeah. You're Aniello's godson, right?"
"That's right."
"How's he doin'?"
"Very good."
"The cancer ain't killed him yet?"
"Uh… no…"
"He's a tough son of a bitch. You see him at Eddie Loulou's funeral last month?
You there?"
"Of course."
"Yeah. Aniello walks in, half his face gone, and the fucking widow almost drops dead in the coffin with Eddie." He laughed and so did I. Ha, ha, ha. He asked me, "You see that?"
"I heard about it when I got there."
"Yeah. Jesus, why don't he wear a scarf or something?"
"I'll mention it to him when we have lunch."
We talked for a few more minutes. I'm usually good at cocktail party chatter, but it was hard to find things in common with Paulie, especially since he thought I was someone else. I asked him, "Do you play golf?" "Golf? No. Why?"
"It's a very relaxing game."
"Yeah? You wanna relax? What for? You relax when you get old. When you're dead.
What's Jimmy doin' with himself?"
"Same old shit."
"Yeah? He better watch his ass. None of my business, but if I was him, I'd lay off the chinks for a while. You know?"
"I told him that."
"Yeah? Good. You can push the chinks so far, you know, but if you keep leanin' on them, they're gonna get their little yellow balls in an uproar. Jimmy should know that."
"He should."
"Yeah. Hey, tell Jimmy that Paulie said hello."
"Sure will."
"Remind him about the place on Canal Street we got to look at."
"I will."
Paulie waddled off and bumped into someone else. I took a few steps toward the bar and someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see a large gentleman whose features looked Cro-Magnon. He asked me, "What's Fat Paulie talkin' to you about?"
"Usual shit."
"What's the usual shit?"
"Who wants to know?"
"Hey, pal, if you don't know who I am, you better fucking ask around." "Okay." I moved to the bar and poured myself a sambuca. How, I wondered indignantly, could anyone here mistake me, John Whitman Sutter, for one of them? I caught a glimpse of myself in a wall mirror. I still looked the same. But maybe my breath still smelled of puttanesca sauce and garlic. Anyway, I asked a young man at the bar, "Who is that?" I cocked my head toward the Cro-Magnon gentleman.
He looked at the man, then at me. "You don't know who that is? Whaddaya from Chicago or Mars?"
"I forgot my glasses."
"Yeah? If you don't know who that is, you don't gotta know."
This sounded like Italian haiku, so I dropped the subject. "Play golf?"
"Nah." The young man leaned toward me and whispered, "That's Sally Da-da." "Right." Now I had three Sallys in my life: Sally Grace; Sally of the Stardust Diner; and a gentleman who, if I recalled Mancuso correctly, was born Salvatore with a whole last name, but who had apparently not mastered much speech beyond the high-chair stage. How's little Sally? Da-da-da. Sally want ba-ba? I said, "That's the Bishop's brother-in-law."
"Yeah. Sally is the husband of the Bishop's wife's sister. What's her name?"
"Anna."
"No, the fucking sister."
"Maria, right?"
"Yeah… no… whatever. Why you asking about Sally Da-da?"
"He told me to ask around about him."
"Yeah? Why?"
"He wants to know what I was talking to Fat Paulie about."
"You shouldn't be talkin' to Fat Paulie about nothing."
"Why not?"
"If you don't know, you better find out."
"Fat Paulie talks too much," I ventured.
"You got that right. Fat Paulie better watch his ass."
"And Jimmy Lip better watch his ass, too," I said.
"Why?"
"He's leaning too hard on the chinks."
"Again? What's wrong with that asshole?"
"He listens to his godson too much."
"Which godson?"
"Aniello. No, Johnny. No…" I had to think how that went.
The young man laughed. "I thought you was gonna say his godson Joey. I'm Joey.
Who are you?"
"John Whitman Sutter."
"Who?"
"The Bishop's attorney."
"Oh… yeah… I saw you on the news. Jack is out?"
"No, Jack is still in. I'm doing the front stuff."
"Yeah. I heard that. Whaddaya want with Sally Da-da?"
"Just talk."
"Yeah. You wanna stay away from that guy. You let the Bishop talk to him."
"Capisco. Grazie." I made my way to the window and looked out over Central Park. Basically all cocktail parties are the same. Right? You just have to get a few drinks in you, get warmed up a little, and work the room. The only thing missing at this little gathering was women. Actually, I realized I didn't miss them. Capisce?
At about ten P.M., a short, squat gentleman with hairy hands arrived, wheeling four suitcases on a luggage cart, one of which looked like my Lark two-suiter. Lenny directed the man, whom he knew, into the appropriate bedrooms. I wondered if Lady Stanhope enjoyed packing my suitcase. I'm glad Frank asked her, not me. At eleven P.M., someone switched to a network news channel and turned up the volume. People began to quiet down and drift over to the TV set. The lead story was still the arrest of Frank Bellarosa, but the slant this time was Alphonse Ferragamo's noontime news conference, which had been given short shrift earlier. I had no doubt that the U.S. Attorney's office had complained vigorously about media sensationalism and too much human-interest fluff regarding don Bellarosa and his attorney. Time for hard news. After the anchor's lead-in, the screen showed yet another cameraman's perspective of the steps of the courthouse, with Bellarosa waving to everyone, and with me looking tan, fit, tall, and well dressed. No wonder the women love me.
Anyway, this lasted only five seconds or so, then the scene shifted to a crowded press-conference room, probably in the bowels of the Foley Square complex. A close-up of the podium showed Alphonse Ferragamo looking more composed than when I'd last seen him in court. A few people around me made interesting observations about the U.S. Attorney, such as 'motherfucker', 'cocksucker', 'asshole', 'shithead', and 'faggot'. I'm glad Alphonse's mother wasn't in the room. Mr Ferragamo shuffled some papers and read a prepared statement. "At seven-forty-five this morning," he began, "agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working within a Federal Organized Crime Task Force, which includes New York City and State police and agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency, acting in coordination with the Nassau County police, effected the arrest of Frank Bellarosa at his Long Island mansion." I could have sworn I saw only Mancuso there. But I guess everybody else was out on Grace Lane, and they wanted to be mentioned.
Ferragamo went on, "This arrest is the culmination of a seven-month investigation by New Jersey state police acting in concert with the U.S. Attorney's office and the FBI. The evidence presented to the grand jury, which led to the indictment and arrest of Frank Bellarosa, implicates Bellarosa as the triggerman in the slaying of the reputed Colombian drug king Juan Carranza." So Ferragamo went on, fashioning a hangman's noose for my client, and I wondered who in that hotel room would put it around his neck. From where I was standing, I could see Bellarosa's face, and he betrayed no emotion, no uneasiness or discomfort. He was listening to La Traviata in his head again. But I could see several other men in the room who looked uneasy. Others looked deep in thought, and a few glanced quickly at Bellarosa.
Ferragamo tied the last knot in the rope by announcing, "Federal witnesses have testified in closed session that there is an ongoing power struggle within the Bellarosa organization and that the murder of Juan Carranza was not sanctioned by the organization or by the other four crime families in New York. The murder was carried out by Bellarosa and a faction of his organization that wants to regain dominance of the drug trade and push out the Colombians, the Caribbean connections, and the East Asian connections."