The Gate House (17 page)

I do some of my best thinking while running, and today’s first subject was my meeting with Elizabeth. I needed to tidy up the gatehouse, then drive into the village for some wine and whatever. Then I considered an agenda for my afternoon with her: legal matters first, followed by an inventory of everything in the house. After that, maybe a glass of wine. Maybe several glasses of wine. Maybe I should stop thinking about this.

I switched mental gears and gave some thought to my long-term plans. As I was going through an abundance of bad options, a black Cadillac Escalade passed me from behind. The vehicle slowed, made a tight U-turn, then headed toward me. As it got closer, I could see Tony behind the wheel.

I slowed my pace as the Cadillac drew abreast of me, then we both stopped, and the tinted rear window slid down. One of my bad options, Anthony Bellarosa, inquired, “Can I give you a lift?”

I walked across the road to the open window and saw that Anthony was alone in the back seat. He was dressed in black slacks and a tasteful tan sports jacket, and I didn’t see a violin case, so I concluded he was on some sort of legitimate errand. He asked again, “You want a lift?”

I replied, “No. I’m running.”

Tony was out of the car, and he reached past me and opened the door as Anthony slid over. Tony said, “Go ’head.”

I think I’ve seen this in the movies, and I always wondered why the idiot got into the car instead of making a scene, running and screaming for the police.

I glanced up and down Grace Lane, which was, as usual, nearly deserted.

Anthony patted the leather seat beside him and repeated his invitation. “Come on. I want to talk to you.”

I thought I’d made it clear that we had nothing to discuss, but I didn’t want him to think I was frightened, which I was not, or rude, which I do well with my peers, but not that well with the socially inept, like Anthony. And then there was the Susan problem, which I might be making too much of, but I wouldn’t want to make a mistake on that. So I slid into the back seat, and Tony shut the door, then got behind the wheel, did another U-turn, and off we drove.

Anthony said to me, “Hey, no hard feelings about the other night. Right?”

“What happened the other night?”

“Look, I understand where you’re coming from. Okay? But what happened in the past should stay in the past.”

“Since when?”

“I mean, it had nothing to do with me. So—”

“Your father screwing my wife has nothing to do with you. My wife murdering your father has something to do with you and her.”

“Maybe. But I’m talking about you and me.”

“There is no you and me.”

“There could be.”

“There can’t be.”

“Did you think about my offer?”

“What offer?”

“I’ll make it a hundred and fifty.”

“It was two.”

“See? You thought about it.”

“You got me,” I admitted. “And now you see I’m not that smart.”

“You’re plenty smart.”

“Make it a hundred, and we can talk.”

He laughed.

Were we having fun, or what?

Anthony nodded toward Tony, then said to me, “Let’s save this for later.” He asked me, “So, what do you think of my paving job?”

“I miss the potholes.”

“Yeah? I’ll rip it up.”

We left Grace Lane and were passing Bailey Arboretum, so I said, “You can let me off here.”

“I want to show you something first. In Oyster Bay. This might interest you. I was going to bring it up the other night, but you ran off.” He added, “I’ll drop you off here on the way back.”

End of discussion. I should have been royally pissed off about what amounted to a kidnapping, but it was a friendly kidnapping, and if I was honest with myself, I’d say I was an accomplice.

And on the subject of my prior voluntary involvement with the mob, Anthony was starting to remind me of his father. Frank never took no for an answer, especially when he thought he was doing you a great favor that you were too stupid to understand. Frank, of course, never failed to do himself a favor at the same time. Or, at the very least, he’d remind you of the favor he did for you and ask for a payback. I’ve been down this road, literally and figuratively, so Anthony was not tempting a virgin. In fact, the tricks and lessons I’d learned from the father were not doing the son any good.

We turned east toward Oyster Bay. Tony, being a good wheelman and bodyguard, was paying a lot of attention to his rearview mirror. I couldn’t help thinking about the tollbooth hit scene in
The Godfather
—which actually took place not too far from here—and I thought,
It’s the car in
front
of you that you need to watch, stupid.

Anyway, Anthony, wanting to keep the conversation away from business and from me thinking I was being taken for a one-way ride, said, “Hey, I spoke to my mother this morning. She wants to see you.”

“Next time I’m in Brooklyn.”

“Better yet, she’s coming for Sunday dinner. You’re invited.”

“Thank you, but—”

“She comes early—like, after church. I send a car for her.”

“That’s nice.”

“Then she cooks all day. She brings her own food from Brooklyn, and she takes over the kitchen, and Megan is like, ‘Do I need this shit?’ Madonna. What’s with these women?”

“If you find out Sunday, let me know.”

“Yeah. Right. But if we have other company, then it’s usually okay. Hey, one time Megan wants to cook an Irish meal, and my mother comes in and says to me, ‘It smells like she’s boiling a goat in there.’” He laughed at the happy family memory, then continued, “And Megan drinks too much vino and hardly eats, and the kids aren’t used to real Italian food—they think canned spaghetti and pizza bagels are Italian food. But she cooks a hell of a meal. My mother. The smells remind me of Sundays when I was a kid in Brooklyn . . . it’s like I’m home again.”

I had no idea why he was telling me this, except, I suppose, to show me he was a regular guy, with regular problems, and that he had a mother.

Apropos of that, he asked me, “Did you ever eat at the house?”

I replied, “I did not.” But Susan did. I added, “Your mother always sent food over.”

Tony, eavesdropping, said, “Yeah. Me and Lenny or Vinnie was always taking food over to your place.”

I didn’t reply, but this would have been a good time to remind Tony that his departed boss could not have been screwing my wife without the knowledge, assistance, and cover stories of him and the aforementioned two goombahs. Well, I couldn’t blame them, and two of them were dead anyway. Three, if you count Frank. Four, if Susan got whacked, and five if I leaned forward and snapped Tony’s neck.

I looked out the side window. We were passing through a stretch of remaining estates, most of which were hidden behind old walls or thick trees, but now and then I could see a familiar mansion or a treed allée behind a set of wrought-iron gates.

The local gentry were tooling around in vintage sports cars, which they liked to do on weekends, and we also passed a group on horseback. If you squinted your eyes and excluded some modern realities, you could imagine yourself in the Gilded Age, or the Roaring Twenties, or even in the English countryside.

Anthony, a modern reality, intruded into my thoughts and inquired, “Hey, did you see that piece of ass on that horse?”

I assumed he wasn’t admiring the horse’s ass, but rather than ask for a grammatical clarification, I ignored him; kidnap victims are not required to make conversation.

I retreated into my ruminations and wondered if Susan had found what she was looking for when she returned here. Based on what Amir Nasim had told me, maybe she had. And I wondered what she thought about me returning. Quite possibly, she saw, or imagined, this circumstance as an opportunity to resume our lives together.

But it’s not easy to pick up where you left off, especially if a decade has passed. People change, new lovers have come and gone, or not gone, and each of the parties has processed the past in different ways.

Anthony asked me, “What are you thinking about?”

“Your mother’s lasagna.”

He laughed. “Yeah? You got it.”

Dinner at the Bellarosas’ was not high on my social calendar, so I said, “I’m busy Sunday. But thank you.”

“Try to stop by. We eat at four.” He added instructions, saying, “I’ll give the guy at the guard booth your name and he’ll give you directions.”

I didn’t reply.

We drove along the shore, then entered the quaint village of Oyster Bay, and Tony headed into the center of town, which was crowded with Saturday people on various missions.

Saturdays, when I was younger and the kids were younger, were hectic. Carolyn and Edward always had sporting events, or golf and tennis lessons, or birthday parties, or whatever else Susan and the other mothers had cooked up for them, and they needed to be driven, usually with friends, on a tight schedule that rivaled the split-second timing of the Flying Wallendas.

This was all before cell phones, of course, and I recalled losing a few kids, missing a few pick-ups, and once dropping off Edward and his friends at the wrong soccer game.

“What’s so funny?”

I glanced at Anthony and replied, “This is exciting. I’ve never been kidnapped before.”

He chuckled and replied, “Hey, you’re not kidnapped. You’re doing me a favor. And you get a ride home.”

“Even if I don’t do you the favor?”

“Well, then we see.” He thought that was funny and so did Tony. I did not.

Tony found an illegal parking space near the center of the village, and he stayed with the car while Anthony and I got out.

Anthony walked along Main Street and I walked with him. It occurred to me that I wouldn’t want anyone I knew to see me walking with a Mafia don, but then I realized it didn’t matter. Better yet, it could be fun.

Anthony stopped near the corner where Main Street crossed another shopping street, and he pointed to a three-story brick building on the opposite corner and informed me, “That’s a historic building.”

“Really?” I knew the building, of course, since I’ve lived around here most of my life, but Anthony, like his father, couldn’t imagine that anyone knew anything until you heard it from him.

Anthony further informed me, “That was Teddy Roosevelt’s summer office.” He glanced at me to see if I fully appreciated his amazing knowledge. He pointed and said, “On the second floor.”

“No kidding?”

He asked me, “Can you believe that the President of the United States ran the country from that dump?”

“Hard to believe.” It wasn’t actually a dump; it was, in fact, a rather nice turn-of-the-century structure, with a mansard roof, housing a combination bookstore and café on the ground floor, and apartments on the upper floors, accessible through a door to the right of the bookstore.

Anthony continued, “You got to picture this—the President drives into town from his place on Sagamore Hill”—he pointed east to where Teddy Roosevelt’s summer White House still stood, about three miles away—“and he’s got maybe one Secret Service guy with him and a driver. And he just gets out of the car, and, like, tips his straw hat to some people, and goes in that door and walks up the stairs. Right?”

To enhance this image, I suggested, “But maybe he stops first for coffee and bagels.”

“Yeah . . . no—no bagels. Anyway, there was offices up there then, and he’s got a secretary—a guy—and maybe another guy who sends telegraph messages and goes to the post office to get the mail. And there’s, like, one telephone in the drugstore down the block.” He looked at me and asked, “Can you believe that?”

I thought I’d already said it was hard to believe, but to answer his question I replied, again, “Hard to believe.” In fact, Roosevelt did most of his work at Sagamore Hill, and rarely came to this office, but Anthony seemed enthused, and he had some point to make, so I let him go on.

He continued, “And it’s summer, and there’s no air-conditioning, and these guys all wore suits and ties, and wool underwear or something. Right?”

“Right.”

“Maybe they had an icebox up there.”

“Maybe.”

He inquired, “Did they have electric fans then?”

“Good question,” which reminded me of another good question, and I asked, “What’s the point?”

“Well, there are two points. Maybe three.”

“Can I have one?”

“Yeah. The first point is the building is for sale. Three million. Whaddaya think?”

“Buy it.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Because you want it.”

“Right. And it’s a piece of history.”

“Priceless.” I glanced at my watch and said to him, “I need to get going. I’ll call a cab.”

“You’re always running off. First you show up, then you run off.”

This was true and astute. I guess I had an approach/avoidance response with the Bellarosas. I said, “I didn’t exactly show up this time. I was kidnapped. But I’ll give you ten minutes.”

“Make it twelve. So, what I’m thinking is, I’ll get rid of that bookstore on the ground floor and put in a high-end moneymaker—some kind of Triple A chain boutique, or maybe like a food franchise place. Baskin-Robbins ice cream or a Starbucks. Right?”

“You need to speak to the village fathers about that.”

“Yeah. I know that.” He added, “That’s where you come in.”

“This is where I leave.”

“Come on, John. It’s no big deal. I buy the building, you handle the closing, then you see what the old shits are going to allow.” He motioned up and down the crowded street and said, “Look at this place. Money. I could get five times the rent if I push it as an historic location. Right?”

“Well—”

“Same with the upstairs spaces. Maybe a law firm. Like, rent Teddy Roosevelt’s office. The clients would love it. I get a decorator in and make it look like it did a hundred years ago. Except for the toilet and the air-conditioning.” He asked me, “Am I off base on this?”

“Anthony, I’ve been gone ten years. Get someone to work out the numbers for you.”

“Fuck the numbers. I’m buying history.”

“Right. Good luck.”

“And here’s my second point. And this has nothing to do with business. And here’s the question—what the fuck has happened to this country?”