"Yes." New York grand juries are sort of like Star Chambers; twenty-three upright citizens sit in secret sessions, and the person under investigation is not present and neither is his attorney. So, without any evidence except what is presented by the government, the grand jury usually votes to indict. It was a safe bet to say that Frank Bellarosa would be indicted. I said, "You think Ferragamo is just harassing you with this indictment?" "Yeah. A regular jury won't convict me, because Ferragamo's got no evidence for them. So Frank Bellarosa versus the United States is not getting to trial. But meanwhile, Ferragamo's calling press conferences. He loves fucking press conferences. He's telling everybody that the Mafia is pushing out the Colombians, the Jamaicans, blah, blah, blah. That's bullshit. We all got our own thing. Then he says, 'Bellarosa personally hit Juan Carranza to show them spies a lesson!' Understand? So the Colombians get their balls in an uproar – they get all macho. Christ, they're worse than Italians. Now they want to settle this mano a mano. Carranza was a big man with them. Okay, so now I got to worry about my own people, too. Understand? Because they don't want a fucking bloodbath, because they're all fat and soft. The South Americans are hungry and hard. They're the new guys and they work harder. They don't have the fucking brains they were born with, but they manage to get things done. Okay, maybe they're too stupid to get at me. You know? So what do they do? They go to my friends and they say, 'Hey, let's settle this before Frank goes to trial, before people start getting hurt. We all got enough problems and we don't need this shit with Bellarosa.' So maybe my guys say, 'We'll take care of Frank.' You see? The sons-of-bitches would give me up to save their own asses. Even though they know I didn't hit Carranza. Ten, twenty years ago, an Italian would say to a spic, 'Fuck you. Get out of here before I feed you your balls for lunch.' But things are different now. There's a whole new world out there. Understand?" That, I understood. Now I discover that even the Mafia are having trouble adapting to this new New World. I said, "That's absolutely fascinating, Frank. And I don't really see any way out for you."
He laughed. "Maybe something will come into your head. I need a very upright lawyer to go talk to Ferragamo. He's the key. He's got to call one of his press conferences and say that he has new evidence about who hit Carranza, or say he's got no evidence at all. You talk to him about that."
"But maybe I don't believe your side of this."
"You will when you see Ferragamo's face after you tell him I know what he's up to."
Bellarosa, I realized, was a man who believed in his instincts. He would not need hard evidence, for instance, before he ordered the murder of someone he suspected of disloyalty. Like a primitive tribunal, all that Bellarosa required was the look of guilt, perhaps a word or phrase that seemed somehow wrong. And in the case of Alphonse Ferragamo, Frank Bellarosa first figured out a motive, then presumed the man guilty of the crime. I don't deny the value of instinct -
I hope I use my instincts in court, and police use instinct every day on the streets. But Frank Bellarosa, whose good instincts had kept him free and alive, perhaps put too much faith in his ability to spot danger, tell friends from enemies, and to read people's minds and hearts. That was why I was sitting there; because Bellarosa had sized me up in a few minutes and decided I was his man. I wondered if he was right.
Bellarosa continued, "The New York State Attorney General, Lowenstein, don't even want a piece of this case. I hear from some people close to him that he thinks it's bullshit. What's that tell you, Counsellor?"
"I'm not sure, and I still don't do criminal work."
"Hey, you might have fun. Think about it."
"I'll do that."
"Good." He settled back in his chair. "Hey, I'm doing that real estate deal next week. I got that firm in Glen Cove you said. They gave me this guy Torrance. You know him? He any good?"
"Yes."
"Good. I don't want no screw-ups."
"Real estate contracts and closings are fairly simple if you pay attention to detail."
"Then you should've done it, Counsellor."
I regarded Bellarosa a moment. I couldn't tell if he was annoyed or just considered me a fool. I said, "We've been through that." "Yeah. But I want you to know you're the first guy who ever turned down that kind of money from me."
"That's discouraging."
"Yeah? Well, people have turned down outright bribes. But never a legitimate fee. It was legit."
"We've been through that, too."
"Yeah. About the grand jury thing, I know you don't drop for money, but I'll pay you a flat fifty for talking to Ferragamo and another fifty if a grand jury isn't convened."
"If I did criminal work, I'd get three hundred an hour, double for courtroom time. I don't take cash rewards if you're not indicted or convicted, and I don't give the money back if you are."
Bellarosa smiled at me, but it was not a nice smile. "I gotta tell you, some of your wisecracks are funny, some are not."
"I know."
"You got balls."
"I know that, too."
He nodded. "I got too many guys around me kissing my ass, and any one of them would stick a knife in my back."
"I feel sorry for you."
"Hey, it's part of life."
"No, it isn't."
"My life. But I also got guys around me who respect me. People who don't kiss my ass, but kiss my hand."
"Does anybody like you?"
He smiled. "I don't really give a shit."
"Work on that, Frank."
He looked at me and said, "Something else I gotta tell ya. Your people been here three hundred years, you said. Right? So you figure everybody who got here after you is uninvited company or something. But my family in Italy goes back a thousand years in that town outside Sorrento. Maybe they go back two thousand years to Roman times. Maybe one of my ancestors was a Roman soldier who invaded England and found your people wearing animal skins and living in mud houses. Capisce?"
"I understand enough history to appreciate the glory of Italian civilization, and you may well take pride in that heritage. But what we're discussing at the moment, the Mafia, is not one of Italian civilization's greatest contributions to Western culture."
"That's a matter of opinion."
"Well, it's most people's opinion."
Bellarosa seemed deep in thought for a full minute, then said, "Okay. Now you got to make a big decision, because you're jerking me around and yourself around. So you stand up, you turn around, and you go out that door. You get your wife and you leave, and you'll never hear from me again. Or, you have a drink with me."
So. All I had to do was stand up and leave. Then why was I still sitting? I regarded Frank Bellarosa a moment. What had I learned in the last few hours? Well, I'd learned that Bellarosa was not only smart, but also more complex than I would have imagined. Also, to give Susan credit for an accurate first impression, Bellarosa was interesting. So, maybe this was Susan's gift to me; this was my challenge. I picked up my glass. "What's this made of?" "Grape. It's like brandy. I told you."
We touched glasses, we drank.
He stood. "Let's go find the women."
CHAPTER 17
We left the library, and as we walked along the mezzanine, I said, "Why don't you go right to the Colombians and explain that you're being set up?" "Caesar does not go to the fucking barbarians and explain things. Fuck them." I could see that my straightforward Anglo-Saxon logic was not what the situation called for, but I said, "A Roman emperor did go to Attila the Hun to talk peace."
"Yeah. I know that." We started down the sweeping stairs, and Bellarosa said, "But what good did it do him? Made him look bad, and Rome got attacked anyway. Look, when people go for your balls, they're saying you got balls. As soon as they think you got no balls, they treat you like a woman. You might as well be dead."
"I see." Obviously my first advice as consigliere wasn't cutting it. I said, "But Ferragamo is banking on that. He knows you won't go to the Colombians." "This is true. Only another wop could have understood that."