he's doing it because you pissed him off in court, and because you saved my life and fucked up his whole thing. So now he's got vendetta on the brain. So watch yourself.' 'I know.' Irony of ironies; Frank Bellarosa was being offered a deal, and I was looking at ten years for perjury. And the one man who could testify against me was Frank Bellarosa. Bellarosa understood this, of course, and I'm sure the irony wasn't lost on him. In fact, he smiled and said, 'Hey, Counsellor, I won't rat you out. Even if they get me by the balls and I got to give up some people, I won't rat you out to Ferragamo.'
I mean, this guy first got you into serious trouble, then got you out of it, then told you that you owed him a favour for his help, then you did him a favour that got you into more trouble, and round and round it went. Now I think he wanted me to say thank you. Speaking in the same low volume as he was, I said, 'Frank, please don't do me any more favours. I can't survive many more of your favours.'
He laughed, but his ribs must have been busted up pretty bad because he winced, and his face went even whiter. He swallowed the last of the sambuca, stayed motionless awhile until his breathing steadied, then sat up a bit and asked me, 'How's your wife?'
'Which one?'
He smiled. 'Susan. Your wife.'
'Why are you asking me? She comes here.'
'Yeah… but I haven't seen her in a while.'
'Neither have I. She just got home yesterday.'
'Yeah. She went to see the kids at school. Right?'
'That's right.' She had also taken another trip to Hilton Head before that, which included a journey to Key West to see her brother, Peter, who is apparently phototropic.
Susan and I never really did have a long talk, but we had a few sentences, and I suggested that she not come here anymore. She seemed to agree, but had probably come anyway; as recently as yesterday, in fact, if those flowers were from her. It must have slipped Frank's memory.
Of course, I should have moved out, but moving out is hard to do. For one thing, I knew I was partly responsible for everything that had happened to us since April. Also, Susan was gone more than she was home, so moving out wasn't a pressing issue. And Susan and I can go weeks and weeks without speaking, and my finances, to be honest, were shaky, and bottom line, I still loved her and she loved me and she had asked me to stay.
So there I was, a lonely house husband, living in my wife's residence, nearly broke, still on the hook as a witness for a Mafia don, the possible target of a rubout, a social pariah, a captain without a boat, and an embarrassment to my law firm. The firm, incidentally, had sent me a registered letter at the Locust Valley office, which I decided to open. The letter asked me to disassociate myself from Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds, forthwith. The letter was signed by all the senior partners, active and retired, even the ones who couldn't remember their own names, let alone mine. One of the signatures was that of Joseph P. Sutter. Pop's a great kidder.
Well, screw Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds. They all needed a few whacks with a lead pipe. Meantime, they could offer me some incentives to leave. Bellarosa said, 'I'm glad she's not pissed at me.'
I looked at him. 'Who?'
'Your wife.'
'Why should she be?'
He replied, 'For almost gelling her husband killed.'
'Don't be silly, Frank. Why, just the other day she was saying to me, 'John, I can't wait for Frank to get better so we can all go to Giulio's again.'' He tried to keep from laughing, but he couldn't and his ribs hurt again. 'Hey… cut it out… you're killing me…' I stood. 'Okay, Frank, here's something that's not so funny. You know fucking well that Susan and I are barely speaking and you know fucking well why. If she wants to come here, that's her business, but I don't want you talking to me about her as if you're making polite small talk. Okay?' Bellarosa stared off into space, which I had learned was his way of showing that he wanted the subject changed. I said to him, 'I have to go.' I moved toward the door. 'Should I tell your nurse you need to use the potty?' He ignored the taunt and said to me, 'Hey, did I ever thank you for saving my life?'
'Not that I recall.'
'Yeah. You know why? Because 'thank you' don't mean shit in my business. 'Thank you' is what you say to women and outsiders. What I say to you, Counsellor, is I owe you one.'
'Jesus Christ, Frank, I hope you don't mean a favour.' 'Yeah. A favour. You don't understand favours. Favours are like money in the bank with Italians. We collect favours, trade favours, count them like assets, hold them and collect on them. I owe you a big favour. For my life.' 'Keep it.'
'No. You gotta ask a favour.'
I looked at him. This was like having an Italian genie. But you can't trust genies. I said, 'If you went to trial for murder, and I asked you not to have Jack Weinstein call me as your witness, would you do that even if it meant your getting convicted for a murder you didn't commit?'
He didn't even hesitate. 'You ask, you get. I owe you my life.' I nodded. 'Well, let me think about it. Maybe I can come up with a bigger and better favour.'
'Sure. Hey, stop by again.'
I opened the door, then turned back to him. 'Hey, these Indians are standing on the beach, you know, and Columbus comes ashore and says to them 'Buon giorno,' and one of the Indians turns to his wife and says 'Shit, there goes the neighbourhood.'' As I closed the door behind me, I heard him laughing and coughing.
CHAPTER 36
I finally decided to go to my Wall Street office to tidy up my affairs there. I sat in my office, my father's old office, and wondered how I could have wasted so many years of my life in that place. But by an act of pure will, I got down to work and did for my firm and my clients basically what I'd done in the Locust Valley office; that is, I wrote memos on each client and each case, and I parcelled everything out to specific attorneys who I thought would be best suited to each case and each client. That was more than my father had done, and more than Frederic Perkins had done before he jumped from the window down the hall.
Anyway, despite my loyalty and conscientiousness, I was as welcome at 23 Wall Street as a four-hundred- point drop in the Dow. Nevertheless, I soldiered on for over a week, speaking to no one but my secretary, Louise, who seemed annoyed at me for having left her holding the bag for the last several months, trying to answer all sorts of questions from clients and partners regarding Mr Sutter's files and cases.
Anyway, in order to put in long days in the Wall Street office, and for other reasons, I was living at the Yale Club in Manhattan. This is a very large and very comfortable establishment on Vanderbilt Avenue, and the rooms are quite nice. Breakfast and dinner aren't bad either, and the bar is friendly. There's a stock market Teletype off the cocktail lounge so you can see if you can afford the place; there's a gym with a swimming pool and squash courts, and the clientele is Yale. What more can a man ask for? One could almost stay here forever, and many members in my situation would do just that, but the club discourages overly long stays for wayward husbands, and in recent years, wayward wives. Regarding the latter, one could get into trouble at the club, but I had enough trouble, so after dinner I would just read the newspapers in the big lounge and have a cigar and port like the other old tweedbags, then go to bed. I did bring Jenny Alvarez to dinner one night, and she said, apropos of the club, 'What a world you live in.'
'I guess I never gave it much thought.'
We chatted about the World Series, and she needled me about the Mets' pathetic four-in-a-row loss to the Yankees. Who would have believed it? Anyway, we talked about everything except Bellarosa, television news, and sex, just to show each other, I guess, that we had a solid friendship based on many mutual interests. Actually as it turned out, other than baseball, we shared almost no interests. We wound up talking about kids, and she showed me a picture of her son. And though it was obvious that we were still hot for each other, I didn't ask her up to my room.
Well, I wound up spending nearly two weeks at the Yale Club, which was convenient in regard to not having to
