The Gate House

by Nelson DeMille

  I’d actually seen Susan a few times over the last decade since we’d both left Long Island—at our children’s college graduations, for instance, and at the funeral of my aunt Cornelia, who was fond of Susan. And on these occasions, Susan and I had always been polite and cordial to each other. In fact, she had been friendlier to me than I to her, and I had the impression she had gotten over me and moved on. I, on the other hand . . . well, I don’t know. And I had no intention of finding out.

  On the subject of funerals, I’d attended Frank Bellarosa’s funeral because . . . Well, I actually liked the guy, despite the fact that he was a criminal, a manipulator, a sociopathic liar, and my wife’s lover. Other than that, he wasn’t a bad guy. In fact, he was charming and charismatic. Ask Susan.

  Also on the subject of funerals, the one I was really excited about attending was the one for William Stanhope. But last I heard from Edward, “Grandpa’s feeling pretty good.” That’s too bad.

  I picked up the stack of photos again and flipped through them. She really was beautiful and sexy. Smart and funny, too. And, as I said, delightfully nutty.

  As I stared at a particularly sexy photo of Susan mounted naked on her stupid horse, Zanzibar, the doorbell rang.

  Like most gatehouses, this one is built inside the estate wall, so no one can come to my door unless they pass through the iron gates that face the road. The gates remain closed at night, and they are automated, so you need a code or a remote control to open them, and I can usually hear them or see the headlights at night, which I hadn’t. Therefore, whoever was at my door had come on foot from the estate grounds, and the only current residents of the estate were Amir Nasim, his wife, their live-in help, Susan, and me.

  So it could be Mr. Nasim at my door, perhaps to pay a social call, or to inform me that Ethel died two minutes ago, and I had ten minutes to move out. Or possibly it was Susan.

  I slipped the photos back into the envelope and walked into the small front foyer as the bell rang again.

  I checked myself out in the hallway mirror, straightened my polo shirt and finger-combed my hair. Then, without looking through the peephole or turning on the outside light, I unbolted the door and swung it open.

  Standing there, staring at me, was the ghost of Frank Bellarosa.

  CHAPTER THREE

  He said, “Do you remember me?”

  It was not, of course, the ghost of Frank Bellarosa. It was Frank’s son Tony, whom I had last seen at his father’s funeral, ten years ago.

  I get annoyed when people ask, “Do you remember me?” instead of having the common courtesy to introduce themselves. But this, I suspected, was not Tony Bellarosa’s most irritating social flaw, nor his only one. I replied, “Yes, I remember you.” I added, in case he thought I was winging it, “Tony Bellarosa.”

  He smiled, and I saw Frank again. “Anthony. It’s Anthony now.” He inquired, “You got a minute?”

  I had several replies, none of which contained the word “Yes.” I asked him, “What can I do for you?”

  He seemed a little put off, then asked, “Can I come in? Oh . . .” He seemed suddenly to have thought of the only logical explanation for my slow response to the doorbell and my not being thrilled to see him, and he asked, “You got somebody in there?”

  A nod and a wink would have sent him on his way, but I didn’t reply.

  “Mr. Sutter?”

  Well, you’re not supposed to invite a vampire to cross your threshold, and I think the same rule applies for sons of dead Mafia dons. But for reasons that are too complex and too stupid to go into, I said, “Come in.”

  I stepped aside, and Anthony Bellarosa entered the gatehouse and my life. I closed the door and led young Anthony into the small sitting room.

  I indicated a rocking chair—Ethel’s chair—near the ash-heaped fireplace, and I took George’s threadbare wingback chair facing my guest. I did not offer him a drink.

  Anthony did a quick eye-recon of the room, noting, I’m sure, the shabby furnishings, the faded wallpaper, and the worn carpet.

  Also, he may have been evaluating some personal security issues. His father used to do this, more out of habit than paranoia. Frank Bellarosa also had an unconscious habit of checking out every female in the room while he was checking to see if anyone might want to kill him. I admire people who can multitask.

  In the case of Susan Sutter, however, Frank had missed some crucial clues and signs of trouble. If I could speculate about those last few minutes of Frank Bellarosa’s life, I’d guess that the blood in Frank’s big brain had flowed south into his little brain at a critical moment. It happens. And when it does, the rest of your blood can wind up splattered around the room, as happened to poor Frank.

  Anthony said, “Nice little place here.”

  “Thank you.” In fact, these old estate gatehouses looked quaint and charming on the outside, but most of them were claustrophobic. I don’t know how I managed to share this cottage with Ethel, even for the short time I was here. I recall going out a lot.

  Anthony asked me, “You lived here for a while. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you’re back from London. Right?”

  I wondered how he knew that.

  “But this Arab who owns the mansion owns this place, too. Right?”

  “Right.” I further informed him, “He’s an Iranian.”

  “Right. A fucking Arab.”

  “The Iranians are not Arabs.”

  “What are they?”

  “Persians.”

  This seemed to confuse him, so he changed the subject and asked, “So, you’re . . . what? Buying it? Renting it?”

  “I’m a houseguest of Mrs. Allard.”

  “Yeah? So, how’s the old lady?”

  “Dying.”

  “Right. No change there.”

  Obviously, he’d been making inquiries. But why?

  “So what happens after she dies?”

  I informed him, “She goes to heaven.”

  He smiled. “Yeah? And where do you go?”

  “Wherever I want.” I suppose I should find out what plans Mr. Nasim had for this house. Maybe he wanted to rent it by the month. But rental prices and sale prices were astronomical on the Gold Coast of Long Island, and they’d actually been going up since 9/11 as thousands of people were quietly abandoning the city out of . . . well, fear.

  “Mr. Sutter? I said, how long are you staying?”

  “Until she dies.” I looked at him in the dim light of the floor lamp. I suppose you’d say Anthony Bellarosa was handsome in a way that women, but not men, would think is handsome. Like his father, his features were a little heavy—the women would say sensual—with full lips and dark liquidy eyes. His complexion, also like his father’s, was olive—his mother, Anna, was very fair—and his well-coiffed hair, like Frank’s, was dark and wavy, but probably longer than Pop would have liked. No doubt Anthony—also like his father—did well with the ladies.

  He was dressed more casually than his father had dressed. Frank always wore a sports jacket with dress slacks and custom-made shirts. All in bad taste, of course, but at least you knew that don Bellarosa dressed for his image. In the city, he wore custom-made silk suits, and his nickname in the tabloids had been “Dandy Don,” before it became “Dead Don.”

  “So, when she dies, then you leave?”

  “Probably.” Anthony was wearing scrotum-tight jeans, an awful Hawaiian shirt that looked like a gag gift, and black running shoes. He also wore a black windbreaker, maybe because it was a chilly night, or maybe because it hid his gun. The dress code in America had certainly gone to hell in my absence.

  He said, “But you don’t know where you’re going. So maybe you’ll stay.”

  “Maybe.” Anthony’s accent, like his father’s, was not pure low-class, but I heard the streets of Brooklyn in his voice. Anthony had spent, I guess, about six years at La Salle Military Academy, a Catholic prep school on Long Island, whose alumni included some famous men,
and some infamous men, such as don Bellarosa. No one would mistake the Bellarosa prep school accents for St. Paul’s, where I went, but the six years at boarding school had softened Anthony’s “dese, dose, and dems.”

  “So, you and the old lady are, like, friends?”

  I was getting a little annoyed at these personal questions, but as a lawyer I know questions are more revealing than answers. I replied, “Yes, we’re old friends.” In fact, as I said, she hated me, but here, in this old vanished world of gentry and servants, of ancient family ties and family retainers, of class structure and noblesse oblige, it didn’t matter much at the end of the day who was master and who was servant, or who liked or disliked whom; we were all bound together by a common history and, I suppose, a profound nostalgia for a time that, like Ethel herself, was dying but not yet quite dead. I wondered if I should explain all this to Anthony Bellarosa, but I wouldn’t know where to begin.

  “So, you’re taking care of the place for her?”

  “Correct.”

  Anthony nodded toward the opening to the dining room, and apropos of the stacks of paper, said, “Looks like you got a lot of work there.” He smiled and asked, “Is that the old lady’s will?”

  In fact, I had found her will, so I said, “Right.”

  “She got millions?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “She leave you anything?”

  “Yes, a lot of work.”

  He laughed.

  As I said, I am Ethel’s attorney for her estate, such as it is, and her worldly possessions are to pass to her only child, the aforementioned Elizabeth. Ethel’s will, which I drew up, left me nothing, which I know is exactly what Ethel wanted for me.

  “Mr. Sutter? What were you doing in London?”

  He was rocking in the chair, and I leaned toward him and inquired, “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  “Oh . . . just making conversation.”

  “Okay, then let me ask you a few conversational questions. How did you know that Mrs. Allard was dying?”

  “Somebody told me.”

  “And how did you know I was living in London, and that I was back?”

  “I hear things.”

  “Could you be more specific, Mr. Bellarosa?”

  “Anthony. Call me Anthony.”

  That seemed to be as specific as he was going to get.

  I looked at his face in the dim light. Anthony had been about seventeen or eighteen—a junior or senior at La Salle—when my wife murdered his father. So, he was not yet thirty, but I could see in his eyes and his manner that unlike most American males, who take a long time to grow up, Anthony Bellarosa was a man, or at least close to it. I recalled, too, that he used to be Tony, but that diminutive lacked gravitas, so now he was Anthony.

  More importantly, I wondered if he’d taken over his father’s business.

  The most fundamental principle of American criminal law is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. But in this case, I recalled quite clearly what Frank Bellarosa had said about his three sons. “My oldest guy, Frankie, he’s got no head for the family business, so I sent him to college, then set him up in a little thing of his own in Jersey. Tommy is the one in Cornell. He wants to run a big hotel in Atlantic City or Vegas. I’ll set him up with Frankie in Atlantic City. Tony, the one at La Salle, is another case. He wants in.”

  I looked at Anthony, formerly known as Tony, and recalled Frank’s pride in his youngest son when he concluded, “The little punk wants my job. You know what? If he wants it bad enough, he’ll have it.”

  I suspected that Tony did get the job and became don Anthony Bellarosa. But I didn’t know that for sure.

  Anthony asked me, “Is it okay if I call you John?”

  “I’m Tony now.” It’s probably not a good idea to make fun of a possible Mafia don, but I did it with his father, who appreciated my lack of ring-kissing. In any case, I needed to establish the pecking order.

  Anthony forced a smile and said, “I remember calling you Mr. Sutter.”

  I didn’t reply to that and asked him, “What can I do for you, Anthony?”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry to just drop in, but I was driving by, and I saw the lights on here, and like I said, I heard you were back, so the gate was closed and I came in through the . . . what do you call it? The people gate.”

  “The postern gate.”

  “Yeah. It was unlocked. You should lock that.”

  “I’m not the gatekeeper.”

  “Right. Anyway, so I got this idea to stop and say hello.”

  I think it was a little more premeditated than that. I said to him, “I hope you’re not blocking the gate.”

  “No. My driver took the car up the road. Hey, do you remember Tony? My father’s driver.”

  “I remember that he used to be Anthony.”

  He smiled. “Yeah. We made a deal. Less confusing.”

  “Right.” I didn’t think the dead don’s driver had much to say about that deal. Regarding the family business, the surviving employees, and the rules of succession, I recalled quite clearly that there was another member of the family who wanted Frank Bellarosa’s job, so, to see how Anthony reacted, I asked, “How is your uncle Sal?”

  Anthony Bellarosa stared at me and did not reply. I stared back.

  The last time I’d seen Salvatore D’Alessio, a.k.a. Sally Da-da, was at Frank’s funeral. Prior to my wife clipping Frank Bellarosa, someone else had attempted the same thing, and the prime suspect was Uncle Sal. This had occurred at a restaurant in Little Italy, at which I was unfortunately present and close enough to Dandy Don Bellarosa and Vinnie, his bodyguard, to get splattered with Vinnie’s blood. Not one of my better nights out.

  In any case, Uncle Sal was not present at the failed hit, of course, but his signature was most probably on the contract. I hate it when families squabble, and though I’m personally familiar with the problem, none of the Sutters or Stanhopes, to the best of my knowledge, have ever taken out a contract on a family member . . . though it’s not a bad idea. In fact, I think I just found some use for Anthony Bellarosa. Just kidding. Really.

  Anthony finally replied, “He’s okay.”

  “Good. Give your uncle Sal my regards when you see him.”

  “Yeah.”

  There are some things in life that you never forget, and those months during the spring and summer leading up to Frank’s death in October and my leaving Susan are filled with sights and sounds that are truly burned into my mind forever. In addition to seeing Vinnie’s head blown off with a shotgun right in front of my face, another sight that I will never forget is of young Anthony Bellarosa at his father’s graveside. The boy held up extremely well—better than his mother, Anna, who was wailing and fainting every few minutes—and in Anthony’s eyes I could see something beyond grief, and I saw him staring at his uncle Sal with such intensity that the older man could not hold eye contact with his young nephew. It was obvious to me, and to everyone, that the boy knew that his uncle had tried to kill his father. It was also obvious that Anthony Bellarosa would someday settle the score. So I was surprised to discover that Uncle Sal was still alive and well—and that Uncle Sal hadn’t killed Anthony yet.

  These gentlemen, however, as I’d learned in my brief association with don Bellarosa and his extended family, were extremely patient and prudent when considering who needed to be whacked, and when.

  On that subject, I wondered how Anthony felt about Susan Sutter, who’d succeeded where Uncle Sal had failed. Now that Susan was back—about four hundred yards from here, actually—I wondered . . . but maybe that was a subject best left alone, so I stuck to family chatter and asked Anthony, “How is your mother?”

  “She’s good. Back in Brooklyn.” He added, “I’ll tell her I saw you.”

  “Please pass on my regards.”

  “Yeah. She liked you.”

  “The feeling was mutual.” Hanging over this conversation, of course, was the awkward fact that my then-w
ife had made Anna Bellarosa a widow, and made Anthony and his two brothers fatherless. I asked, “And your brothers? Frankie and Tommy, right?”

  “Right. They’re doing good.” He asked me, “How about your kids?”

  “They’re doing fine,” I replied.

  “Good. I remember them. Smart kids.”

  “Thank you.”

  The road that passes by Stanhope Hall and Alhambra, Grace Lane, is private and dead ends at the Long Island Sound, so Anthony Bellarosa was not just passing through, and I had the thought that he still lived in this area, which was not a good thought, but I wanted to know, so I asked him, “Where are you living?”

  He replied, “On my father’s old estate.” He added, “There’s some houses built there now, and I bought one of them.” He explained, “They’re called Alhambra Estates. Five-acre zoning.”

  I didn’t reply, but I recalled that as part of Frank’s stay-out-of-jail deal with the government, he’d had to forfeit Alhambra for unpaid taxes on illegal earnings and/or for criminal penalties. The last time I was on the property after Frank’s death, the magnificent villa had been bulldozed, and the acreage had been subdivided into building plots to maximize the income to the government, and also for spite.

  I’d actually driven past the former estate a few times since I’d been back, and I’d caught a glimpse of the new houses through the wrought-iron gates, and what I saw were mini-Alhambras with red-tiled roofs and stucco walls, as though the rubble of the main mansion had regenerated into small copies of itself. I wondered if the reflecting pool and the statue of Neptune had survived.

  Anyway, I now discovered that Anthony Bellarosa had purchased one of these tract villas. I wasn’t sure if this was ironic, symbolic, or maybe Anthony had simply gotten a good deal from the builder, Dominic, who was a paesano of Frank’s.

  Anthony seemed to be brooding about his lost patrimony and informed me, “The fucking Feds stole the property.”

  It annoys me when people (like my ex-wife) rewrite history, especially if I was present at the historical moment in question. Anthony, however, may not have actually known the circumstances surrounding his lost birthright, but he could certainly guess if he had half a brain and a willingness to face the facts.