"Why? Because I stuck him with the dinner bill?"
"John… what you said was a bit strong. But… he asked me to tell you that he would accept an apology from you."
I clapped my hands. "What a magnificent man! What a beautiful human being!" I wiped a tear from my eye.
The song had ended, and we had our audience back.
Susan leaned across the table and said to me, "You've changed. Do you know that?"
"And how about you, Susan?"
She shrugged and went back to the menu, then looked up again. "John, if you apologized, it would make things so much less tense. For all of us. Even if you don't mean it. Do it for me. Please."
There was a time, of course, not so long ago, when I would have. But that time had passed, and it was not likely to come again. I replied, "I will not say something I don't mean. I will not crawl for you, or for anyone. My only regret in that episode is that I should have grabbed his tie and yanked his face into his cheesecake."
"You're really angry, aren't you?"
"No, anger is transient. I hate the bastard."
"John! He's my father."
"Don't bet on that."
So, I had dinner alone. But I figured I should get used to it. Someday my quick wit is going to get me into trouble. Actually, I guess it did.
CHAPTER 26
This elderly couple walked into my office and announced that they had not gotten along for about fifty years and they wanted a divorce. They looked as if they were around ninety – stop me if you've heard this – so I said to them, "Excuse me for asking, but why have you waited so long to seek a divorce?" And the old gentleman replied, "We were waiting for the children to die." Well, there are times when I feel the same way. Susan and I were reconciled yet again, and I had apologized for suggesting that her paternal origin was in question and that her mother was a whore. And even if Charlotte had once had hot pants, what difference did it make? But there was still the open question of whether or not her father was a monumental prick and so forth. I honestly believe he is, plus some. In fact, I even jotted down a few more descriptions of him in the event I ever saw him again. Susan, of course, knew what he was, which was why she wasn't terribly upset with me; but William was her father. Maybe. Anyway, I was still living rent-free in Susan's house, and we were speaking again but not in complete or compound sentences.
I had been getting to bed early on Monday evenings, as per Mr Bellarosa's suggestion, rising early on Tuesdays and joining him for coffee at dawn. Susan hadn't questioned me about my two early-Tuesday departures on foot to Alhambra, and as per my client's instructions, I hadn't told her about his imminent arrest.
The FBI knew now, of course, that I was Frank Bellarosa's attorney, but my client did not want them to know that we had anticipated an early-Tuesday-morning visit. So, for that reason, I had to walk across our back acreage and approach Alhambra from the rear so as not to be seen from the DePauw outpost.
Incidentally, I had run into Allen DePauw a few times in the village, and with that profound lack of moral courage that is peculiar to rat finks, stool pigeons, and police snitches the world over, he did not snub me, but greeted me as though we were still buddies. On the last occasion that I ran into him, at the hardware store, I inquired, "Do you trust your wife alone with all those men at your house around the clock? Don't you go to Chicago a lot for business?" Instead of taking a swing at me, he replied coolly, "They have a mobile home behind my house."
"Come on, Allen, I'll bet they're always coming inside to borrow milk while you're away."
"That's not very funny, John. I'm doing what I think is right." He paid for his machine gun oil or whatever it was and left.
Well, probably he was doing what he thought was right. Maybe it was right. But I knew that he was one of the people at the club who were making anonymous demands for my expulsion.
Anyway, in regard to Tuesday early A.M., even if the FBI came for Frank Bellarosa on another day, I was ready every morning to jump out of bed and be at Alhambra quickly. This was really exciting.
It was early August now, a time when I should have been in East Hampton. But Dr Carleton, whoever the hell he was, was in my house with his feet on my furniture, enjoying East End summer fun and the instant respectability of an eighteenth-century shingled house. I'd spoken to the psychiatric gentleman on the phone once to get him squared away with the house, and he'd said to me, "What is your rush in going to closing, if I may ask?"
"My mother used to take money from my piggy bank and never replaced it. It's sort of complicated, Doc. Next week, okay?"
So, I had that date out east and I needed the bucks for the Feds, but the other Feds across the street here wanted to bust my client and I had to stay on top of that, too. It was hard to believe that it was as recently as March when I'd had a safe, predictable life, punctuated only now and then by a friend's divorce or a revealed marital infidelity and occasionally a death. My biggest problem had been boredom.
I had called Lester Remsen the day after the battle of McGlade's and said to him, "Sell twenty thousand dollars" worth of some crap or another and drop the cheque with my secretary in Locust Valley."
He replied, "This is not the time to sell anything that you're holding. Your stuff got hit harder than most. Hold on to your positions if you can." "Lester, I read the Wall Street Journal, too. Do as I say, please." "Actually, I was going to phone you. You have margin calls -" "How much?"
"About five. Do you want me to give you an exact figure so you can send me a cheque? Or, if money is a little tight, John, I can just liquidate more stocks to cover the margin calls."
"Sell whatever you have to."
"All right. Your portfolio is a little shaky."
This is Wall Street talk for, "You've made some very stupid investments." Lester and I go back a long way, and even when we're not speaking, we talk. At least we talk about stocks. I realized I didn't like stocks or Lester. "Sell everything. Now."
"Everything? Why? The market is weak. It will rally in September -" "We've been talking stocks for twenty years. Aren't you tired of it?" "No."
"I am. You know, Lester, if I had spent the last twenty years looking for Captain Kidd's treasure, I would have lost less money." "That's nonsense."
"Close my account." I said, and hung up.
Well, anyway, it was six A.M. on the first Tuesday in August, and I was brooding about this and that. In reality, even if Dr Carleton wasn't in my summer house, I wouldn't be there this August, owing to the fact that my client next door wanted me to stick close. I suppose I could have moved into Alhambra, to be very close, but I don't think the don wanted me around while he conducted business and consorted with known criminals. And I certainly didn't want to be a witness to any of that.
So on that overcast Tuesday morning, I walked out of Susan's house and began my cross-country trek in a good suit, carrying a big briefcase into which I would place five million dollars in cash and assignable assets with which to make bail.
I had examined all these assets one night at Bellarosa's house in order to list and verify them. Thus, I saw a small piece of the don's empire. Most of what I saw was recorded property deeds, which the court would accept. There were some bearer bonds and a few other odds and ends, together totalling about four million, which would meet even the most excessive bail. But to be certain, Bellarosa had dumped a shopping bag onto his kitchen table that contained a million dollars in cash.