As I was making my third trip to Alhambra in as many weeks, the birds were singing and the air was still cool. A ground mist sat about chest high on the fields between our property, and it was sort of eerie, as if I were going to Wasp heaven in my Brooks Brothers suit and briefcase. I reached the reflecting pool with the statue of Mary and Neptune still glaring at each other, and a figure moved toward me out of the mist. It was Anthony, who was being taken for a walk by a pit bull. He barked at me. The dog, I mean. Anthony said, "Guh mornin', Mistah Sutta."
He must have sinus condition. "Good morning, Anthony. How is the don this morning?"
"He's 'spectin' ya. I'll walk ya."
"I'll walk myself, thank you." I proceeded up the path to the house. Anthony was quite nice when you got to know him.
I approached the rear of the big house, noticing that the security lights were still on. I crossed the big patio and pulled the bell chain. I saw Vinnie through the glass doors politely bolstering his gun as he recognized me. "Come on in, Counsellor. The boss is in the kitchen."
I entered the house at the rear of the palm court, and as I made my way across the large space, I noticed Lenny, the driver, sitting in a wicker chair near one of the pillars, drinking coffee. He, like Vinnie, was wearing a good suit in expectation of visitors and for the possible trip into Manhattan. Lenny stood as I approached and mumbled a greeting, which I made him repeat more distinctly. This was fun.
I made my way alone through the dark house, through the dining room, morning room, butler's pantry, and finally into the cavernous kitchen, which smelled of fresh coffee.
The kitchen had been completely redone, of course, and the don had told me exactly how much it cost to import the half mile or so of Italian cabinetry, the half acre of Italian floor tile, and the marble countertops. The appliances, sensibly, were American.
The don was sitting at the head of an oblong kitchen table, reading a newspaper. He was dressed in a blue silk pinstripe suit, a light blue shirt, which is better than white for television, and a burgundy tie with matching pocket handkerchief. The newspapers had dubbed him the Dandy Don and I could see why. Bellarosa glanced up at me. "Sit, sit." He motioned to a chair and I sat to his right near the head of the table. He poured me coffee while still reading his paper.
I sipped on the black coffee. I suspected that one would never find a round table in the house of a traditional Italian, because a round table is where equals sat. An oblong table has a head where the patriarch sat. So, there I was, sitting at his right hand, and I wondered if that was significant or if I was getting into this thing too much.
He glanced up from the newspaper. "So, Counsellor, is this the morning?" "I hope so. I don't like getting up this early." He laughed. "Yeah? You don't like it. You're not the one going to jail."
I'm not the one who's broken the law for thirty years.
He put down the newspaper. "I say this is it. The grand jury sat for three weeks. That's long enough for murder. The RICO shit can take a year, nosing around your business, trying to find what you own and where it came from. Money is complicated. Murder is simple."
"That's true."
"Hey, fifty bucks says that this is the morning."
"You're on."
"Yeah, I know what you're thinking. You think they're not going to indict me.
You think you squared it with Mancuso."
"I never said that. I said I told him what you asked me to tell him – about Ferragamo. I know Mancuso is the type of man who would pass that on to Ferragamo and maybe even to his own superiors. I don't know what will come of that." "I'll tell you what's going to come of it. Nothing. Because that scumbag Ferragamo is not going to back off after making his pitch to a grand jury. That would make him look like a real gavone. But I'm glad you talked to Mancuso. Now Ferragamo knows that Bellarosa knows." Bellarosa went on, "But maybe you shouldn't've told him you were my attorney."
"How could I speak to him on your behalf without telling him I was representing you?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. But maybe if you didn't say anything, he might've opened up to you."
"That's unethical and illegal, Frank. Do you want a crooked lawyer or a Boy Scout?"
He smiled. "Okay. We'll play you straight."
"I'll play myself straight."
"Whatever."
We drank coffee awhile and the don shared his newspaper with me. It was the Daily News, that morning's city edition, which someone must have delivered to him hot off the printing press in Brooklyn. I flipped through the lead stories, but there was no early warning, no statement from Ferragamo about an imminent arrest. "Nothing about you in here," I said.
"Yeah. The scumbag's not that stupid. I got people in the newspapers and he knows it. He's got to wait for the bulldog edition, about midnight. We'll get that tonight. This prick loves the newspapers, but he loves TV more. You want something to eat?"
"No, thanks."
"You sure? I'll call Filomena. Come on. Get something to eat. It's gonna be a long morning. Eat."
"I am really not hungry. Really." You know how these people are about eating, and they actually get annoyed when you refuse food, and they're happy when you eat. Why it matters to them is beyond me.
Bellarosa motioned to a thick folder on the table. "That's the stuff."
"Right." I put the folder containing the deeds and such in my briefcase. Bellarosa produced a large shopping bag from under the table. In the bag was one hundred stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills, a hundred bills in each stack, for a total of one million dollars. It looked good like that.
He said to me, "Don't get tempted on the way to court, Counsellor."
"Money doesn't tempt me."
"Yeah? That's what you say. Watch, I'll get to court and find out you cold-cocked Lenny and stole the money. And I'll be in jail and I get this postcard from you in Rio, and it says, 'Fuck you, Frank.'" He laughed. "You can trust me. I'm a lawyer."
That made him laugh even harder for some reason. Anyway, I have this large briefcase, almost a suitcase, that lawyers use when they have to drag forty pounds of paper into court, plus lunch. So I transferred the paper money into the briefcase along with the four million in paper assets. Paper, paper, paper. Bellarosa said, "You looked at those deeds and everything the other day, right?"
"Yes."
"So you see, I'm a legitimate businessman."
"Please, Frank. It's a little early in the morning for bullshit." "Yeah?" He laughed. "Yeah, you see, I got Stanhope Hall in that briefcase now. I got a motel in Florida, I got one in Vegas, and I got land in Atlantic City. Land. That's the only thing that counts in this world. They don't make no more land, Counsellor."
"No, they don't except in Holland where -"
"There was a time when they couldn't take land away from you unless they fought you for it. Now, they just do some paperwork."
"That's true."
"They're gonna take my fucking land."
"No, it's just going to be used as collateral. You'll get it back." "No, Counsellor, when they see that shit in your briefcase, they're gonna come after it. Ferragamo is going to start a RICO thing next. They're gonna freeze everything I got, and one day they're gonna own it all. And that stuff you got in there makes their job easier. The murder bullshit smoked out a lot of my assets."
"You're probably right."
"But fuck them. Fuck all governments. All they want is to grab your property. Fuck them. There's more where that came from." I guess so, if Mancuso was correct. A lot more. "Hey, did I tell you I made an offer for Fox Point? Nine mill. I talked to that lawyer who you told me handles things here for the people who own the place." He asked me, "You want to handle that for me?" I shrugged. "Why not?"
"Good. I'll give you a point. That's ninety large."