'It's up to you, Frank.'
'Yeah. This could get messy. You got a nice law practice, you got a nice family. You got friends. People are gonna bust your balls. You and your wife go take a nice vacation someplace.'
What a nice man. I wondered what he was up to. I said, 'It's your decision, Frank.'
'No, it's your decision now. I don't want you to feel pressured. No problem either way. You want, I'll drop you off at the train station. You go home.' I guess it was time for me to bail out or take an oath of loyalty. The man was a manipulator. But I already knew that. I said, 'Maybe you're right. You don't need me anymore.'
He patted my shoulder. 'Right. I don't need you. I like you.' Just when I think I've got this guy figured out, I don't. So we went to the Plaza Hotel.
What I didn't know was that half the Mafia in New York were going to show up that night.
CHAPTER 29
The Plaza is my favourite hotel in New York, and I was glad that Frank and I shared the same taste in something, since I was apparently going to be there awhile.
We checked into a large three-bedroom suite overlooking Central Park. The staff seemed to appreciate who we were – or who Bellarosa was – but they were not as obvious about it as the paesanos at Giulio's, and no one seemed particularly nervous.
Frank Bellarosa, Vinnie Adamo, Lenny Patrelli, and John Whitman Sutter sat in the spacious living room of the suite. Room service delivered coffee and sambuca, and Pellegrino water for me (which I discovered is an antidote for Italian overindulgence). By now it was twenty minutes to five, and I assumed we all wanted to catch the five- o'clock news on television. I said to Frank, 'Do you want to call your wife before five?'
'Oh, yeah.' He picked up the telephone on the end table and dialled. 'Anna? Oh…' He chuckled. 'How you doin' there? Didn't recognize your voice. Yeah. I'm okay. I'm in the Plaza.'
He listened for a few seconds, then said, 'Yeah. Out on bail. No big deal. Your husband did a terrific job.' He winked at me, then listened a bit more and said, 'Yeah, well, we went for a little lunch, saw some people. First chance I had to call… No, don't wake her. Let her sleep. I'll call later.' He listened again, then said, 'Yeah. He's here with me.' He nodded his head while my wife spoke to him, then said to her, 'You want to talk to him?' Bellarosa glanced at me, then said into the phone, 'Okay. Maybe he'll talk to you later. Listen, we got to stay here a few days… Yeah. Pack some stuff for him, and tell Anna I want my blue suit and grey suit, the ones I had made in Rome… Yeah. And shirts, ties, underwear, and stuff. Give everything to Anthony and let him send somebody here with it. Tonight. Okay?… Turn the news on. See what they got to say, but don't believe a word of it… Yeah.' He laughed, then listened. 'Yeah… Okay… Okay… See you later.' He hung up, then almost as an afterthought, he said to me, 'Your wife sends her love.'
To whom?
There was a knock on the door, and Vinnie jumped up and disappeared into the foyer. Lenny drew his pistol and held it in his lap. Presently, a room service waiter appeared wheeling a table on which was a bottle of champagne, a cheese board, and a bowl of fruit. The waiter said, 'Compliments of the manager, sir.' Bellarosa motioned to Vinnie, who tipped the waiter, who bowed and backed out.
Bellarosa said to me, 'You want some champagne?'
'No.'
'You wanna call your wife back and tell her what you need?'
'No.'
'I'll dial it for you. Here…' He picked up the telephone. 'You go in your room for privacy. Here, I'll get her.'
'Later, Frank. Hang up.'
He shrugged and hung up the phone.
Vinnie turned on the television to the five-o'clock news. I hadn't expected a lead story, but there was the anchorman, Jeff Jones, saying, 'Our top story, Frank Bellarosa, reputed head of the largest of New York's five crime families, was arrested at his palatial Long Island mansion early this morning by the FBI. Bellarosa was charged in a sealed sixteen-count federal indictment in the murder of Juan Carranza, an alleged Colombian drug lord who was killed in a mob-style rubout on the Garden State Parkway on January fourteenth of this year.' Jeff Jones went on, reading the news off the teleprompter as if it were all news to him. Where do they get these guys? Jones said, 'And in a startling development, Judge Sarah Rosen released Bellarosa on five million dollars' bail after the reputed gang leader's attorney, John Sutter, offered himself as an alibi witness for his client.'
Jones babbled on a bit about this. I wondered if Susan recalled the morning of January fourteenth. It didn't matter if she did or not, since I knew she would cover me so I could cover Frank Bellarosa. Oh, what tangled webs we weave, and so forth. Mr Salem taught me that in sixth grade.
Jeff Jones was saying now, 'We have Barry Freeman live at Frank Bellarosa's Long Island estate. Barry?'
The scene flashed to Alhambra's gates, and Barry Freeman said, 'This is the home of Frank Bellarosa. Many of the estates here on Long Island's Gold Coast have names, and this house, sitting on two hundred acres of trees, meadows, and gardens, is called Alhambra. And here at the main gates of the estate is the guard booth – there behind me – which is actually a gatehouse in which live two, maybe more of Bellarosa's bodyguards.'
The camera panned in on the gatehouse and Freeman said, 'We've pushed the buzzer outside there and we've hollered and shaken the gates, but no one wants to talk to us.'
The camera's telescopic lens moved in, up the long driveway, and the screen was filled with a fuzzy picture of the main house. Freeman said, 'In this mansion lives Frank the Bishop Bellarosa and his wife, Anna.' I heard Frank's voice say, 'What the fuck's this got to do with anything?' Freeman went on for a while, describing the lifestyle of the rich and infamous resident of Alhambra. Freeman said, 'Bellarosa is known to his friends and to the media as Dandy Don.'
Bellarosa said, 'Nobody better call me that to my face.' Vinnie and Lenny chuckled. Clearly they were excited about their boss's television fame.
The scene now flashed back to Freeman, who said, 'We've asked a few residents on this private road about the man who is their neighbour, but no one has any comment.' He continued, 'We don't think the don has returned home from Manhattan yet, so we're waiting here at his gate to see if we can speak to him when he does.'
Bellarosa commented, 'You got a long wait, asshole.'
Barry Freeman said, 'Back to you, Jeff.'
The anchor, Jeff Jones, said, 'Thanks, Barry, and we'll get right back to you if Frank Bellarosa shows up. Meanwhile, this was the scene this morning at the Federal Courthouse in lower Manhattan. Jenny Alvarez reports.' The screen showed the video tape of that morning: Frank Bellarosa and John Sutter making their way down the steps of the courthouse as savage reporters yelled questions at us. My blue Hermes tie looked sort of aqua on camera, and my hair was a bit messy, but my expression was a lawyerly one of quiet optimism. I noticed now that the snippy female reporter who had given me a hard time on the lower steps was on my case even then as we first left the courthouse, but she hadn't really registered in my mind at the time. I saw, too, by her microphone, that the station I was watching was her station. I guess that was Jenny Alvarez. She was yelling at me, 'Mr Sutter? Mr Sutter? Mr Sutter?'
Obviously, she had been fascinated by me the moment she laid eyes on me.
Actually, she wasn't bad-looking herself.
But neither Frank nor I had said much as we descended the steps, and the scene shifted to the lower steps where we got stuck for a while. And there was Great Caesar, with the majestic classical columns of the courthouse behind him, puffing on his stogie, wisecracking and hamming it up for the cameras. I hadn't noticed when I was there, but from the camera's perspective I could see a line of federal marshals on the top steps of the courthouse, including my buddy, Wyatt Earp.
Frank commented to the three of us, 'I gotta lose some weight. Look how that jacket's pulling.'
Vinnie said, 'You look great, boss.'
Lenny agreed, 'Terrific. Fuckin'-ay-terrific.'
It was my turn. 'You could drop ten pounds.'
'Yeah? Maybe it's just the suit.'
