"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 back something. I try to keep my clients as honest as I am. When you cheat at poker, life, or taxes, you've taken the honour 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. 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 the 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."
I replied with annoyance, "Well, find out what case or client it refers to, pull the file, and tell him to hold." I was about to hang up with Louise when she said, "I asked him that, Mr Sutter. He won't say. He says he must speak to you personally."
"Oh…" I thought I knew what this was about. But why would the IRS call me about Frank Bellarosa? Then I thought it might be Mr Mancuso of the FBI calling undercover. But that didn't seem right. Frank Bellarosa had introduced a new dimension into my life, so naturally a call such as this took on a Bellarosa colouring, and it was not a pretty rose tint. I said to Louise, "Put him through."