The Gate House (11 page)

“I do, too.”

George Allard and I could have been considered friends, except for the artificial and anachronistic class barrier, which was enforced more by George than by me. George, like many old-school servants, had been more royal than the King, and he truly believed that the local gentry were his social superiors; however, whenever they slacked off or behaved badly (which was often), George respectfully reminded them of their obligations as gentlemen, and he would gently but firmly suggest corrections to their behavior and manners. I think I was a challenge to him, and we didn’t become close until he gave up on me.

Elizabeth suggested, “If you have time, why don’t you come up with me—or wait for me? I’m staying only fifteen minutes tonight. Then, if you’d like, we can go for a drink.” She added, in case I was misinterpreting the offer, “I’d like to speak to you about Mom’s will, and whatever else I need to speak to you about.”

I replied, “I do need to speak to you. You are, as you know, the executrix of her estate, and her sole heir, aside from a few minor bequests. But unfortunately, I have plans this evening.”

“Oh . . . well . . .”

Actually, I had time to at least walk her to the front door, but I kept thinking that Susan, my mother, or Father Hunnings might pull up. On the other hand, that might not be a bad thing. I could imagine some interesting reactions from my ex-wife, ex-mother, and ex-priest if they saw me talking to the attractive divorcée.

To get another rumor mill going, I should have said, “I’m having dinner with a Mafia don,” but, in a Freudian slip, I said, “I’m having dinner with a business prospect.”

“Oh. Does that mean you’re staying?”

“I’m not sure.” I suggested, “How about tomorrow night? Are you free?”

“No . . . I’m having dinner with friends.” She smiled. “Thursday is ladies’ night out. But you’re welcome to join us for a drink.”

“Uh . . . perhaps not.” I considered asking her to dinner Friday night, but that would sound like a weekend date instead of a weekday business dinner, so I said, “I’d like you to do a quick inventory of the personal property—Mom and Dad’s—and look over some paperwork. Also, your mother asked that you . . . find the dress she wants to wear . . . so, why don’t you come to the house on Saturday or Sunday?”

“Saturday afternoon would be good. Would four o’clock work?”

“Yes. I’ll be sure my estate gate is open.”

She smiled and said, “I have the code.” She informed me, “You are sleeping in my room.”

“I know.”

“I’d like to see it, one last time. Is that all right?”

“Do I need to clean it?”

“No. If it was clean, I wouldn’t recognize it.”

I smiled. She smiled.

I suggested, “If you have a van or station wagon, we can get some personal things moved out.”

She replied, “I have that.” She nodded toward a big SUV of some sort. Maybe these things ate the other cars. She asked, “Will that do?”

“It should. Or we can make a few trips.” I added, “You should arrange for a mover for the furniture.”

“All right.” She suddenly asked me, “John, do you think I should buy the gatehouse? Is it for sale?”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask Mr. Nasim. Why would you want to buy it?”

She shrugged. “Nostalgia. Maybe I’d live there. I don’t need the big house in Mill Neck. The kids are gone. I got the house in the divorce. Tom got my shoes and purses.” She smiled and said, “Or I could rent the gatehouse to you, if you stayed.”

I smiled in return.

She looked at her watch and said, “I should go. So, I’ll see you Saturday, about four.”

“Right. If there is any change, you know the number.”

“Do you have a cell?”

“Not in the U.S.”

“Okay . . .” She handed me the pastry box, then fished around in her purse, found a business card, and wrote on the card, saying, “My home number and my cell.”

I exchanged the card for the pastry box and said, “See you Saturday.”

“Thanks, John, for all you’re doing for Mom.”

“It’s nothing.”

“And what you did for Dad. I never properly thanked you.”

“He was a good man.”

“He thought the world of you.” She added, “And your father was a good man, and he . . . he understood what you were going through.”

I didn’t reply, and we did a quick hug and air kiss. She turned, took a few steps, then looked back and said, “Oh, I have a letter for you from Mom. I’ll bring it Saturday.”

“Okay.”

I watched her walking quickly toward the hospice house, then I turned and got into my rental car.

As I drove down the lane toward the road, I replayed the conversation, as people do who are trying to extract some meaning beyond the words spoken. I also analyzed her body language and demeanor, but Elizabeth was not easy to read; or, maybe, as several women have told me, I miss the subtleties. If a woman says, “Let’s have a drink and talk business,” I actually think it’s about business. It’s a wonder I ever got laid.

Anyway, on to my next adventure: dinner with don Anthony Bellarosa.

Ethel
,
Elizabeth
,
Anthony
. And, eventually,
Susan
.

An individual life passes through a continuum of time and space, but now and then you enter a warp that sucks you back into the past. You understand what’s going on because you’ve been there before; but that’s no guarantee that you’re going to get it right this time. In fact, experience is just another word for baggage. And memory carries the bags.

More importantly—egg drop or wonton? Chopsticks or fork?

I pulled into a diagonal parking space in front of Wong Lee’s Chinese restaurant.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
noticed a big American flag decal displayed in the front window of Wong Lee’s, next to the credit card decals. I also noticed Tony (formerly known as Anthony) sitting in the driver’s seat of the big black SUV I’d seen a few nights earlier on Grace Lane. The windows were tinted, but the driver’s window was down, and I didn’t see Anthony Bellarosa (formerly known as Tony) inside the vehicle.

Tony spotted me and shouted, “Hey! Mistah Sutta! Hey! It’s me! Tony. How ya doin’?”

It would have been difficult for me—or anyone within half a mile—to ignore him, so I walked toward the SUV and said, in my best St. Paul’s accent, “I’m doing very well. Thank you for asking.”

“Hey, you look great.” He reached through the window, we shook hands, then he opened the door and jumped out. He wanted to shake again, so we did, and he said, “The boss is inside, waitin’ for ya.”

I glanced at my watch and saw I was fifteen minutes early. Frank Bellarosa, a graduate of La Salle Military Academy, once advised me, apropos of meetings and battles, “Like General Nathan Bedford Forrest said, Counselor, ‘Get there firstest with the mostest.’” Probably Frank had passed that on to his son, and that made me wonder how much Anthony had learned at the knee of his father before Frank’s life and Anthony’s education had been cut short. And, I wondered, how much was in the blood?

Tony inquired, “So whaddaya been up to?”

“Same old shit.”

“Yeah? You look great.”

I think we covered that, and I wished I could say the same about Tony, but he’d aged in ten years, a result, possibly, of job stress. Nevertheless, I said, “You’re looking good, Anthony. Well—”

“Tony.”

“Right.”

He took a pack of cigarettes from his black sweatsuit warmup jacket and offered me one, which I declined.

He lit up and said, “The boss says no smokin’ in the car.”

“Good rule.” The SUV, I now noticed, had the Cadillac logo on the hubs, and the word “Escalade” on the front door. There was an American flag decal on the side window. If I could see the rear bumper, I’m sure the bumper stickers would say, “Suburban Mafia,” and “My kid can kill your honor student.”

Tony took a drag, then returned to his subject, saying, “You can’t fuckin’ smoke no place no more.”

It’s been a while since I’ve heard compound double negatives interspersed with the F-word, and I actually smiled.

Tony, by the way, was dressed in running shoes and the aforementioned black sweatsuit ensemble. Frank Bellarosa would have fired him on the spot. Or fired at him.

Interestingly, Tony sported an American flag pin on his warmup jacket, which at first surprised me, then did not. The Mafia always considered themselves loyal and patriotic Americans.

“So,” Tony inquired, “how’s Mrs. Sutta?”

“I have no idea.”

I should mention that Susan was a favorite with the late don’s goons, and she in turn found them exotic or something, including their totally whorish girlfriends. I didn’t share her fascination with these characters, and she called me a snob. I’m quite certain that Tony had changed his opinion of Mrs. Sutter after she capped the don.

“You ain’t seen her?”

I didn’t like him asking about her, and I replied, “No. All right, good seeing you—”

“Hey. Those were the days. Right?”

“Right.”

“You, me, the don, God rest his soul, that scumbag Lenny, may he rot in hell, and Vinnie, God rest his soul.”

A scorecard would show three dead and two living. The don, God rest his soul, had been killed by you-know-who, and Vinnie, God rest his soul, had his head blown off with a shotgun, and scumbag Lenny, may he rot in hell, was Frank’s driver, and also the guy who dropped a dime on Frank, resulting in the Saturday night shoot-out at Giulio’s in Little Italy. Lenny had sped off with the two hit men in Frank’s stretch Caddy, but he was later found by the police in the car’s trunk at Newark Airport with a garrote around his neck—which reminded me, if I needed reminding, that these people played for keeps, and could not be trusted.

I said to Tony, “Those were the days.”

“Yeah. Hey, remember that morning when the Feds came for the boss? That little wop, Mancuso. Remember that?”

The gentleman in question was FBI Special Agent Felix Mancuso, with whom I’d had some prior conversations about me working for Frank Bellarosa, and who, despite that fact, liked me. Mr. Mancuso had shown up at Alhambra to arrest don Frank Bellarosa for the murder of the Colombian drug lord, and Frank knew this was coming, so I was there as his attorney, and Lenny and Vinnie were there to look tough, and Tony, I recalled, was in the Alhambra gatehouse. Felix Mancuso had come alone, without an army of agents, to show Frank Bellarosa that his balls were at least as big as Frank’s. But before Mancuso put the cuffs on Frank, he took me aside and tried to save my soul, telling me to get my life together and get away from Bellarosa before it was too late. Good advice, but it was already too late.

And here I stood now, at the threshold of perhaps another great folly, and I realized I could choose not to walk into Wong Lee’s Chinese restaurant.

Tony said, “Hey, I’m keepin’ ya. Go ’head. Third booth on the right.”

I turned and walked toward the restaurant.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
hird booth on the right.

Wong Lee’s hadn’t changed much in ten years, or in thirty years, for that matter, and the décor could best be described as 1970s Chinese restaurant.

Anthony was sitting facing the door, as is customary for men in his profession. He had good lines of sight and fields of fire, except for his rear, which seemed unsecured, unless there was another goombah back there somewhere.

He was talking on his cell phone, holding it in his left hand, so that his right hand was free to nibble fried wontons or pull his gun.

Well, maybe I’m overanalyzing his choice of seating; I mean, it’s a Chinese restaurant in a suburban town, for goodness’ sake. Did you ever see a headline saying, Mafia Boss Hit in Chinese Restaurant?

On the other hand, based on Anthony’s cautious behavior in front of the gatehouse, it was very possible that he knew he was on somebody’s clip list. And I’m having dinner with this guy? You would think I should have learned my lesson at Giulio’s.

Anthony had seen me as soon as I opened the door, and he was smiling and waving his free gun hand as he kept talking. He was wearing another version of the awful shirt he’d had on the other night, but this time he wore an electric blue sports jacket over it.

The hostess noticed we were
paesanos
, and escorted me to the booth saying, “You sit with your friend.”

Then why am I being seated
here
?

Anthony was still chatting, but he stuck out his hand and we shook. He said into the phone, “Okay . . . okay . . . I’m sorry . . . yeah . . . okay . . .”

Wife or mother.

He continued, “Yeah . . . he’s here, Ma. He wants to say hello . . . yeah . . . here . . . Ma . . . Ma . . .” He covered the mouthpiece and said to me, “You know why Italian mothers make great parole officers? They never let anyone finish a sentence.” He handed me the phone and said, “My mother wants to say hello.”

I hate when people hand me a phone to say hello to someone I don’t want to say hello to, but I liked Anna Bellarosa, so I put the phone to my ear and heard her say, “All the Italian restaurants in Glen Cove, and you take him to the Chinks? You don’t
think
, Tony. Your father knew how to
think
. You—”

“Anna, hi, this is—”

“Who’s this?”

“John Sutter. How are you?”

“John! Oh my God. I can’t believe it’s you. Oh my God. John, how are you?”

“I’m—”

“Tony says you look great.”

“Anthony.”

“Who?”

“Your son—”

“
Tony
. Tony says he saw you the other night. He says you’re living here now.”

“Well, I—”

“Why don’t you go to Stanco’s? Why are you eating at the Chinks?”

“Chinese was
my
idea. So, you’re back in Brooklyn?”

“Yeah. In the old neighborhood. Williamsburg. Since Frank . . . oh my God, John. Do you believe he’s dead?”

Actually, yes.

“It’s ten years, John, ten years since my Frank . . .” She let out a sigh, followed by a little sob, caught her breath, then continued, “Nothing is the same without Frank.”

That’s good news.

She went into a brief eulogy of her deceased husband, which sounded well-practiced, emphasizing his qualities as a father, and said, “The boys miss him. In a few weeks is Father’s Day, John. The boys take me to the cemetery every Father’s Day. They cry at his grave.”