Which was true. There was a huge, orange hunter's moon rising, and it was such a beautiful, haunting sort of night that I almost offered to join her. With the two estates about to become subdivisions, and Fox Point about to become Iranian territory, and with the remaining landed gentry not speaking to us, the days of horseback riding were drawing to a close, and even I was going to miss that. But that night, I decided not to ride. I think I had sensed she wanted to be alone. She said, 'I may be late.'
'All right.'
'If I don't see you tonight, John, please wake me before you leave.'
'I will.'
'Good night.'
'Happy trails.'
And she left. In retrospect, she had seemed perfectly normal, but I told you she was nuts, and that full moon didn't help.
At about eleven P.M., I was contemplating retiring for the night as I wanted to be up before dawn and I had a long day on the road ahead of me. But Susan still wasn't home, and you know how husbands and wives are about falling asleep before the other is home. I suppose it's partly concern and partly jealousy, but whatever it is, the person at home wants to hear the car pull up in the driveway, even if they're not speaking to the other person. In this case, I wasn't waiting for a car to pull up, of course, but for the sound of hoofbeats, which I can sometimes hear now that the stable is closer to the house. But it was a car that pulled up in front of the house, and I saw its headlights coming up the drive long before I heard the tyres on the gravel. I was in my second-floor bedroom at the time, still fully dressed, and as I came down the stairs, I heard the car door shut, then heard the doorbell ring. A strange car in the driveway at eleven P.M. and a ringing doorbell is not usually good news. I opened the door to see Mr Mancuso standing there with an odd expression on his face. 'Good evening, Mr Sutter.' 'What's up?' was all I could think to say with my heart in my throat 'Your wife -' 'Where is she? Is she all right?'
'Yes. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to… she's not hurt. But I think you should come with me.'
So, wearing corduroy jeans and a sweatshirt, I followed him out to his car, and we got in. We didn't speak as he made his way down the dark drive. As we went past the gatehouse, I saw Ethel Allard looking out the window, and we were close enough so that our eyes met, and I wondered if I looked as worried as she did. We swung onto Grace Lane and turned left toward Alhambra. I said to Mr Mancuso, 'Is he dead?'
He glanced at me and nodded.
'I guess he wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest this time.'
'No, he wasn't.' He added, 'Do you have a good stomach?'
'I saw a man's head blown off on a full stomach.'
'That's right. Well, he's uncovered, and I guess you'll see him, because we held off on calling the police. I came and got you as a courtesy, Mr Sutter, a favour, so you can speak to your wife before the county detectives arrive.' 'Thank you.' I added, 'You didn't owe me any favours, so I guess I owe you one now.'
'All right. Here's the favour. Get what's left of your life together. I'd like that.'
'Done.'
Mancuso seemed in no hurry, as if he were unconsciously hesitating, and it took us a while to get up the long cobble drive. I noticed, irrelevantly, that every window in Alhambra was lit. Mancuso said to me, 'What a place. But like Christ said, 'What is a man profited if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?''
I didn't think St Felix understood the true nature of Frank Bellarosa. I replied, 'He didn't sell his soul, Mr Mancuso. He was more in the buying business.'
He glanced at me again. 'I think you're right.'
I said, 'Is Mrs Bellarosa here?'
'No. She's in Brooklyn.'
'Which was why my wife was here.'
He didn't reply.
I added, 'In fact, it was very convenient for Mr Bellarosa and Mrs Sutter having Mrs Bellarosa packed off to Brooklyn for extended visits.' Again no reply.
I said, 'You not only allowed that, you aided and abetted it.' He replied this time, 'That was not our business, Mr Sutter. It was your business. You knew.'
'I know you have to keep your witnesses happy, Mr Mancuso, but you don't have to pimp for them.'
'I understand your bitterness.'
'Understand, too, Mr Mancuso, that neither you nor I are as clean and pure as we were last Easter.'
'I know that.' He added, 'This was a very dirty case. And I can't even say that the ends justified the means. But I'll make my peace in my own way. I know you'll do the same.'
'I'll give it a shot.'
'Professionally, no one is very happy that Frank Bellarosa died before he could tell us everything he knew. No one is very happy with what Mrs Sutter did. So maybe we got what we deserved for what we did, for bending the rules and letting her come here and never even running a metal detector over her. We have some answering to do for this. Maybe that makes you feel better.' 'Not a bit.'
The car stopped in front of Alhambra, and I got out quickly and went into the house. In the palm court were six FBI men, two in casual clothes with rifles slung across their backs and four in suits. They all turned and looked at me. I was approached by two of them and frisked, then got the metal detector routine that they should have given to my wife.
The first thing I noticed as I looked around was a large potted palm lying on its side near the archway that led to the dining room. The clay pot was cracked open, and soil and palm fronds were spread over the red tile floor. Partially hidden behind the big pot and the foliage was a man sprawled on the floor. I walked over to him.
Frank Bellarosa was lying on his back, his arms and legs outstretched and his striped robe thrown open, revealing his naked body. I could see the healed wounds and pockmarks where the shotgun blasts had hit his arms, neck, and legs some months before. There were three new wounds, one above his heart, one in his stomach, and one right in his groin. I wondered which shot she had fired first. There was a lot of blood, of course, all over his body and his robe, all over the floor, and even on the plant. The three wounds had partly coagulated and looked like red custard. I noticed now that there was blood splattered some distance from his body, and I realized he had fallen from the railed mezzanine above. I looked up and saw that I was standing under where his bedroom door would be.
I looked back at Bellarosa's face. His eyes were wide open, but this time there was no life or pain in them, no tears, only eternity. I kneeled down and pressed his eyelids closed, and I heard Mr Mancuso's voice behind me, 'Please don't touch anything, Mr Sutter.'
I stood and took a last look at Frank Bellarosa. It occurred to me that the Italians had always understood that at the core of life's problems are men with too much power, too much charisma, and too much ambition. The Italians made demigods of such men, but at the same time they hated them for these very same qualities. Thus, the killing of a Caesar, a don, a duce, was a psychologically complex undertaking, embodying both sin and salvation in the same act. Perhaps Susan, not the sort of person to think of harming anyone for any reason, had absorbed some of her lover's psyche along with his semen, and had decided to use a Bellarosa solution to solve a Bellarosa problem. But how did I know that for sure? Maybe John is projecting. Mancuso tapped my arm and drew my attention to the far side of the palm court.
Susan was sitting with her legs crossed in a wicker chair, between a pillar and a potted tree, out of the line of sight of the corpse. She was fully dressed in her riding outfit, though I did not know then nor would I ever know if she had been fully dressed earlier. Her long red hair, however, which had been tied up under her riding cap, was now loose and dishevelled. Otherwise she looked very composed. Very beautiful, actually. I walked toward her. As I got within a few feet of her, she looked up at me but made no move to meet me. I saw now that an FBI man was standing near the pillar, watching her, guarding her actually. She glanced up at him, and he nodded, and she stood and came toward me. Odd, I thought, how even the highborn learn so quickly how to become prisoners. Depressing, actually.
We stood a few feet apart, and I saw that she had been crying, but she looked all right now. Composed, as I said. I suppose our audience was waiting for us to embrace or for someone to break down or maybe go for the other's throat. I was aware that six or seven men were ready to spring into action in the event of the latter. These guys were tense, of course, having already lost one person they were supposed to be safeguarding.
