The Gate House

by Nelson DeMille

  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?”

  Well, for one thing, the Mafia is still around. But people who are part of the problem never see themselves as part of the problem; the problem is always someone else. I replied, “The problem, as I see it, is fast-food chains and lawyers. Too many of both.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a lot more than that. Do you think a President could walk down this street today with one bodyguard?”

  “You do. And he’s
in the car.”

  “I’m not the fucking President, John.”

  I noticed he didn’t say, “No one is trying to kill me, John,” which was what most people would have said.

  He continued, “Julius Caesar walked out of the Senate building, with no bodyguards, no Praetorian guards, because that’s how it was then. But they stabbed him to death. And that was the end of the Republic, and the beginning of the emperors thinking they were like gods. Understand?”

  “I get your point. But there’s no turning back to a simpler time. Or a safer time.”

  “Right . . . but, standing here, I think . . . I don’t know. Maybe . . . like, we lost something.”

  He didn’t finish whatever thoughts had been forming in his mind, and quite frankly, I was surprised that he even had thoughts like this. I recalled, though, that his father also harbored some half-expressed worldviews that made him unhappy. And, I suppose, after 9/11, Anthony, like a lot of people, had come to the understanding that there was more to his self-absorbed life than a difficult wife, a complex family history, a clinging mother, and a stressful occupation. Quite possibly, he was thinking, too, about his own mortality.

  Anthony lit a cigarette and continued to look at the building across the road. Finally, he said, “When I was a kid at La Salle, one of the brothers said to us, ‘Anyone in this room can be President of the United States.’” Anthony took a drag on his cigarette and concluded, “He was full of shit.”

  Funny, they told us the same thing in my prep school, but at St. Paul’s, it was a possibility. I said to him, “We shape our own destiny, Anthony. We have dreams and ambitions, and we make choices. I, for instance, have chosen to go home.”

  He actually thought that was funny, but he didn’t think that was one of my choices. He said, “Here’s my other point—my thought—” The traffic light changed and he took my arm and we crossed the busy street. I would have given anything just then to run into the Reverend James Hunnings. “Father, may I introduce my friend and business partner, don Anthony Bellarosa? You remember his father, Frank. Oh, and here’s my mother. Harriet, this is Frank Bellarosa’s little boy, Tony, all grown up and now called Anthony. And, oh my goodness, there’s Susan. Susan, come here and meet the son of the man you whacked. Doesn’t he look like his father?”

  All right, enough of that. We reached the opposite sidewalk without meeting anyone I knew, or having to stop so don Bellarosa could sign autographs.

  Anthony said to me, “My father once said, ‘There’s only two kinds of men in this world. Men who work for other people, and men who work for themselves.’”

  I didn’t reply, because I knew where this was going.

  He continued, “So, like, I work for myself. You work for other people.”

  Again, I didn’t reply.

  He continued, “So, what I’m thinking is that I front you the money you need to open an office here and hang out your shingle. What do you think about that?”

  “It’s a long commute from London.”

  “Hey, fuck London. You belong here. You could be in Teddy Roosevelt’s old office, and do your tax law stuff here. Hire a few secretaries, and before you know it, you’re raking in big bucks.”

  “And I wonder who my first client will be.”

  “Wrong. See? You’re wrong on that. You and me have no connection.”

  “Except the money you loan me.”

  “I’m not loaning you the money. I’m fronting it. I’m investing in you. And if it doesn’t work out for you, then I lose my investment, and I just kick your ass out of the office. You have no downside.”

  “I don’t get my legs broken or anything like that?”

  “Whaddaya talking about?”

  “And what have I done to deserve this opportunity?”

  “You know. For all that you did for my father. For saving his life. For being the one guy who never wanted anything from him, and for not wanting any harm to come to him.”

  Actually, I did want something from him—a little excitement in my life, and I got that. As for the other thing, after I realized he was having an affair with my wife, I wished him great harm, and I got that, too. But I wasn’t about to tell Anthony that Pop and I were even on that score. Instead, I said to him with impatience in my voice, “Tell me exactly what the hell you want from me. And no bullshit about you investing in my future with no strings attached.”

  We were attracting a little attention, and Anthony glanced around and said in a quiet voice, “Come upstairs and we can talk about that.” He added, “The apartment is empty. The realtor is coming in half an hour. I got the key.”

  “Tell me here and now.”

  He ignored me, turned toward the door, and unlocked it, revealing a small foyer and a long, steep staircase. He said, “I’ll be upstairs.”

  “I won’t.”

  He stepped into the foyer, looked back at me, and said, “You want to hear what I have to say.”

  He turned and climbed the stairs.

  I turned and walked away.

  As I moved along Main Street, thinking about a taxi or running the five or six miles home, another thought, which I’d been avoiding, intruded into my head.

  If I really thought about this, and let my mind come to an inevitable conclusion, then I knew that Anthony Bellarosa, despite what he’d told me, was not going to allow Susan, his father’s murderer, to live down the street. Or live at all. He just couldn’t do that. And there were undoubtedly people waiting for him to take care of it. And if he didn’t take care of it, then his paesanos—including probably his brothers—would wonder what kind of don this was.

  And yet Anthony wanted me to work for him, and the unspoken understanding was that if I did this, then Susan was safe. For the time being.

  So . . . I needed to at least go along with this, until I could speak to Susan. It really is all about keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer.

  I turned and walked back to the building.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The door was still ajar, and I climbed the stairs.

  There was a landing at the top, and I opened the only door, which revealed the living room of an empty apartment. The carpet was worn, the beige paint was dingy, and the high plaster ceiling looked like it was ready to fall. An altogether depressing place, except that it had big windows and it was very sunny.

  Another good feature was that the Mafia don seemed to have left. Then I heard a toilet flush, and a door at the far end of the room opened, and Anthony said, as if I’d been there the whole time, “The plumbing seems okay.” He looked around and announced, “All this shit needs to be ripped out. But I own a construction company—hey, you remember Dominic? He did the horse stable at your place.” He further informed me, “Sometime back in the thirties, they turned these offices into apartments. So, I get rid of the tenants, and I can get double the rent as office space. Right?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “I see big, fancy moldings, thick carpets, and mahogany doors. And you know what I see on that door? I see gold letters that say, ‘John Whitman Sutter, Attorney-at-Law.’ Can you see that?”

  “Maybe.”

  He didn’t seem to react to this hint of capitulation, figuring, correctly, that if I’d climbed the stairs, then I was ready to listen.

  He said, “Let’s look at the other rooms.” He walked through a door, and I followed into a large corner bedroom from which I could see the streets below. The walls were painted white over peeling wallpaper, and the carpet looked like Astroturf. Anthony said to me, “The realtor said this was Roosevelt’s office.”

  Actually, the realtor was mistaken, or more likely, lying. Roosevelt, as I said, kept his office at Sagamore Hill, and this was probably his secretary’s office. Anthony was being sold a bill of goods by a sharp realtor, who wanted to increase the value of the property. More interestingly, Anthony was totally buying it, the way people do who are more enthused than smart. If Frank was here, he’d smack his son on the head a
nd say, “I got a bridge in Brooklyn I’ll sell you.”

  Anthony went on, “Roosevelt could look out these windows and check out the broads.” He laughed, then speculated, “Hey, do you think he had a comare?”

  I recalled that Frank used this word, and when I asked Susan, who spoke passable college Italian, what it meant, she said, “Godmother,” but that didn’t seem like the context in which Frank was using it. So I asked Jack Weinstein, Frank’s Jewish consigliere and my Mafia interpreter, and Jack said, with a smile, “It means, literally, ‘godmother,’ but it’s the married boys’ slang for their girlfriend or mistress. Like, ‘I’m going to see my godmother tonight.’ Funny.”

  Hilarious. Here’s another example of how to use the word in a sentence: Frank had a comare named Susan.

  Anthony asked, “Whaddaya think? You think he got blow jobs under his desk here?”

  “I think the history books are silent on that.”

  “Too bad. Anyway, I’ll get somebody to check with the local historical society about pictures of how this place looked when Roosevelt was here. We’re gonna reproduce that.”

  Whether or not I wanted to work in a museum—I mean, whose office was this, anyway? In any case, a check with the Oyster Bay Historical Society would reveal to Anthony that Roosevelt didn’t actually work here. Following that, a check of the Oyster Bay Enterprise-Pilot obituaries would show a dead realtor.

  He suggested, “We need a moose head on this wall.” He laughed, then led me into a smaller room, which looked the same as the bedroom, except it was even shabbier.

  He said, “This is where your private secretary sits.” He further shared his vision with me and said, “You put a pull-out couch in here and get a little fica. Capisce?” He laughed.

  How could this deal get any better? Sex, money, power, and even history.

  There was a desk and file cabinet in this room, and I asked Anthony, “Who lived here?”

  “A literary agent.” He added, “He got evicted, but the other tenants have leases, and I need to get them out.”