I sat there a moment, and for no particular reason, I saw us on that boat again, he and I, nearly forty years ago, in the harbour at night, and saw this sort of close-up of my hand in his, but then my hand slipped out of his hand, and I reached for him again, but he had moved away and was talking to someone, perhaps my mother.
"Mr Sutter?"
I said to her, "Tell him I do not wish to speak to him." She seemed not at all surprised, but simply nodded and left. I watched the green light on my phone, and in a few minutes it was gone.
From the office, I went directly to my boat and sat in the cabin, listening to the rain. It was not a night you would choose to go out into, but if you had to go out, you could, and if you had been caught by surprise in the wind and rain, you could ride it through. There were other storms that presented more of a challenge, and some that were clear and imminent dangers. Some weather was just plain death.
There were obviously certain elemental lessons that you learned from the sea, most of them having to do with survival. But we tend to forget the most elemental lessons, or don't know when they apply. This is how we, as sailors, get ourselves into trouble.
We can be captains of our fate, I thought, but not masters of it. Or as an old sailing instructor told me when I was a boy, "God send you the weather, kid. What you do with it or what it does to you depends on how good a sailor you are."
That about summed it up.
CHAPTER 22
Friday morning dawned bright and clear. Susan was up and out riding before I was even dressed.
She had finished the painting next door, and we were to have an unveiling at the Bellarosas' as soon as Anna found the right place for the painting, and Susan found an appropriate frame. I couldn't wait.
I was having my third cup of coffee, trying to decide what to do with the day, when the phone rang. I answered it in the kitchen, and it was Frank Bellarosa. "Whaddaya up to?" he asked.
"Seven."
"What?"
"I'm up to seven. What are you up to?"
"Hey, I gotta ask you something. Where's the beach around here?"
"There are a hundred miles of beaches around here. Which one did you want?"
"There's that place at the end of the road here. The sign says no trespassing.
That mean me?"
"That's Fox Point. It's private property, but everyone on Grace Lane uses the beach. No one lives there anymore, but we have a covenant with the owners." "A what?"
"A deal. You can use the beach."
"Good, 'cause I was down there the other day. I didn't want to be trespassing." "No, you don't want to do that." Was this guy kidding or what? I added, "It's a misdemeanour."
"Yeah. We got a thing in the old neighbourhoods, you know? You don't shit where you live, you don't spit on the sidewalk. You go to Little Italy, for instance, you behave."
"Except for the restaurant rubouts."
"That's different. Hey, take a walk with me down there."
"Little Italy?"
"No. Fox Place."
"Fox Point."
"Yeah. I'll meet you at my fence."
"Gatehouse?"
"Yeah. Fifteen, twenty minutes. Show me this place." I assumed he wanted to discuss something and didn't want to do it on the telephone. In our few phone conversations, there was never anything said that would even suggest that I might be his attorney. I think he wanted to spring this on Ferragamo and the New York press as a little surprise at some point. "Okay?" he asked.
"Okay."
I hung up, finished my coffee, put on jeans and Docksides, and made sure twenty minutes passed before I began the ten-minute walk to Alhambra's gates. But was the son of a bitch pacing impatiently for me? No. I went to the gatehouse and banged on the door. Anthony Gorilla opened up. "Yeah?" I could see directly into the small living room, not unlike the Allards' little place, the main difference being that sitting around the room was another gorilla whom I supposed was Vinnie and two incredibly sluttish-looking women who might be Lee and Delia. The two sluts and the gorilla seemed to be smirking at me, or perhaps it was my imagination.
Anthony repeated his greeting. "Yeah?"
I turned my attention back to Anthony and said, "What the hell do you think I'm here for? If I'm expected, you say, 'Good morning, Mr Sutter. Mr Bellarosa is expecting you.' You do not say 'yeah?' Capisce?"
Before Anthony could make his apologies or do something else, don Bellarosa himself appeared at the door and said something to Anthony in Italian, then stepped outside and led me away by the arm.
Bellarosa was wearing his standard uniform of blazer, turtleneck, and slacks. The colours this time were brown, white, and beige, respectively. I saw, too, as we walked, that he had acquired a pair of good Docksides, and on his left wrist was a black Porsche watch, very sporty at about two thousand bucks. The man was almost getting it, but I didn't know how to bring up the subject of his nylon stretch socks.
As we walked up Grace Lane, toward Fox Point, Bellarosa said, "That's not a man you want to piss off."
"That's a man who had better not piss me off again."
"Yeah?"
"Listen to me. If you invite me to your property, I want your flunkies to treat me with respect."
He laughed. "Yeah? You into the respect thing now? You Italian, or what?" I stopped walking. "Mr Bellarosa, you tell your goons, including your imbecile driver, Lenny, and the half-wits and sluts in that gatehouse, and anyone else you have working for you, that don Bellarosa respects Mr John Sutter." He looked at me for about half a minute, then nodded. "Okay. But you don't keep me waiting again. Okay?"
"I'll do my best."
We continued our walk up Grace Lane, and I wondered how many people saw us from their ivory towers. Bellarosa said, "Hey, your kid came over the other day. He tell you?"
"Yes. He said you showed him around the estate. That was very good of you."
"No problem. Nice kid. We had a nice talk. Smart like his old man. Right? Up-front like his old man, too. Asked me where I got all the money to build up the estate."
"I certainly didn't teach him to ask questions like that. I hope you told him it was none of his business."
"Nah. I told him I worked hard and did smart things." I made a mental note to talk to Edward about the wages of sin and about crime doesn't pay. Frank Bellarosa's advice to his children was probably less complex and summed up in three words: Don't get caught.
We reached the end of Grace Lane, which is a wide turnaround in the centre of which rises a jagged rock about eight feet high. There is a legend that says that Captain Kidd, who is known to have buried his treasure on Long Island's North Shore, used this rock as the starting point for his treasure map. I mentioned this to Bellarosa and he asked, "Is that why this place is called the Gold Coast?"
"No, Frank. That's because it's wealthy."
"Oh, yeah. Anybody find the treasure?"
"No, but I'll sell you the map."
"Yeah? I'll give you my deed to the Brooklyn Bridge for it."
I think my wit was rubbing off on him.
We walked up to the entrance to Fox Point, whose gatehouse was a miniature castle. The entire front wall of the estate was obscured by overgrown trees and bushes, and none of the estate grounds were visible from Grace Lane. I produced a key and opened the padlock on the wrought-iron gates, asking Bellarosa, "How did you get in here?"
"It was opened when I got here. Some people were on the beach. Do I get one of those keys?"
"I suppose you do. I'll have one made for you." Normally, anyone who opens the padlock does not bother to lock it behind them, which was how Bellarosa had gotten in. But there was something about this man that made me rethink every simple and mundane action of my life. I had visions of his goons following us, or somebody else's goons following us, or even Mancuso showing up. In truth, you could scale the wall easily enough, but nevertheless, after we passed through the gates, I closed them again, reached through the bars and snapped the padlock shut. I said to Bellarosa, "Are you armed?"