Gold Coast

by Nelson DeMille

  Understand, please, this woman needs twenty thousand dollars like I need to move another stable across the property. I cleared my throat, the way Messrs. Melzer and Weber had done. “Why are you bringing that up?”

  “My attorneys want to know—”

  “Your father.”

  “Well . . . I don’t really care about the money. But it’s not a good habit to get into. I mean, mingling assets.”

  “We mingle my assets. Look, Susan, rest assured I have no claim on your property, even if we do occasionally mingle assets. You have a very tight marriage contract. I’m a lawyer. Trust me.”

  “I do, John, but . . . I don’t actually need to have the money, but I do need a sort of promissory note. That’s what my . . . lawyers said.”

  “All right.’’ I scribbled an IOU for $20,000 on the place mat, signed and dated it, and pushed it across the table. “It’s legal. Just ignore the part about lunch, dinner, and cocktails, steaks and chops.”

  “You needn’t be so touchy. You’re a lawyer. You understand—”

  “I understand that I’ve given your father free legal services for nearly two decades. I understand that I paid half the cost for the moving of your stable—”

  “Your horse is in there, too.”

  “I don’t want the stupid horse. I’m going to have him turned into glue.”

  “That’s an awful thing to say. And by the way, you bought the boat in your name only.”

  “The check had my name only on it, lady.”

  “All right, then . . . I don’t like to bring this up, but you’ve never had to make a mortgage or rent payment since we’ve been married.”

  “And what did you do to get that house except to get born with a silver spoon up your ass?”

  “Please don’t be crude, John. Look, I don’t like to talk about money. Let’s drop it. Please?”

  “No, no, no. Let us not drop it. Let us have our very first and very overdue fight about money.”

  “Please lower your voice.”

  I may or may not have lowered my voice, but the jukebox came on, and so everyone who was listening to us had to listen to Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.’’ Great song. I think the guy at the end of the bar played it for me. I gave him a thumbs-up.

  Susan said, “This is very ugly. I’m not used to this.”

  I addressed Lady Stanhope. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. You’re quite right, of course. Please put that IOU in your bag and I will repay the loan as soon as I can. I’ll need a few days.”

  She seemed embarrassed now. “Forget it. Really.’’ She ripped up the IOU. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Then, in the future, keep my business and our business to yourself, and do not discuss any of it with your father. I strongly suggest you get a personal attorney who has nothing to do with your father or your trustees. I will deal with that attorney in any future matters.’’ Including matrimonial. “And please keep in mind that, for better or worse, I am your husband.”

  She was really quite red now, and I could see she was vacillating between my feet and my throat. She finally said, “All right, John.’’ She picked up the menu and I couldn’t see her face.

  I told you about the red hair, and I knew she was still wavering between her good breeding and her bad genes. I suppose, as a purely precautionary move, I should have put the steak knives out of her reach, but that might be overreacting. I was still pretty hot myself, of course, and I had to get one last zinger in. I said, “I didn’t appreciate your father calling you the other night to see if you were all right. Does he think I beat you?”

  She glanced up from the menu. “Of course not. That was silly of him.’’ She added, “He’s really quite angry with you.”

  “Why? Because I stuck him with the dinner bill?”

  “John . . . what you said was a bit strong. But . . . he asked me to tell you that he would accept an apology from you.”

  I clapped my hands. “What a magnificent man! What a beautiful human being!’’ I wiped a tear from my eye.

  The song had ended, and we had our audience back.

  Susan leaned across the table and said to me, “You’ve changed. Do you know that?”

  “And how about you, Susan?”

  She shrugged and went back to the menu, then looked up again. “John, if you apologized, it would make things so much less tense. For all of us. Even if you don’t mean it. Do it for me. Please.”

  There was a time, of course, not so long ago, when I would have. But that time had passed, and it was not likely to come again. I replied, “I will not say something I don’t mean. I will not crawl for you, or for anyone. My only regret in that episode is that I should have grabbed his tie and yanked his face into his cheesecake.”

  “You’re really angry, aren’t you?”

  “No, anger is transient. I hate the bastard.”

  “John! He’s my father.”

  “Don’t bet on that.”

  So, I had dinner alone. But I figured I should get used to it. Someday my quick wit is going to get me into trouble. Actually, I guess it did.

  Twenty-six

  This elderly couple walked into my office and announced that they had not gotten along for about fifty years and they wanted a divorce. They looked as if they were around ninety—stop me if you’ve heard this—so I said to them, “Excuse me for asking, but why have you waited so long to seek a divorce?’’ And the old gentleman replied, “We were waiting for the children to die.”

  Well, there are times when I feel the same way. Susan and I were reconciled yet again, and I had apologized for suggesting that her paternal origin was in question and that her mother was a whore. And even if Charlotte had once had hot pants, what difference did it make? But there was still the open question of whether or not her father was a monumental prick and so forth. I honestly believe he is, plus some. In fact, I even jotted down a few more descriptions of him in the event I ever saw him again. Susan, of course, knew what he was, which was why she wasn’t terribly upset with me; but William was her father. Maybe.

  Anyway, I was still living rent-free in Susan’s house, and we were speaking again but not in complete or compound sentences.

  I had been getting to bed early on Monday evenings, as per Mr. Bellarosa’s suggestion, rising early on Tuesdays and joining him for coffee at dawn. Susan hadn’t questioned me about my two early-Tuesday departures on foot to Alhambra, and as per my client’s instructions, I hadn’t told her about his imminent arrest.

  The FBI knew now, of course, that I was Frank Bellarosa’s attorney, but my client did not want them to know that we had anticipated an early-Tuesday-morning visit. So, for that reason, I had to walk across our back acreage and approach Alhambra from the rear so as not to be seen from the DePauw outpost.

  Incidentally, I had run into Allen DePauw a few times in the village, and with that profound lack of moral courage that is peculiar to rat finks, stool pigeons, and police snitches the world over, he did not snub me, but greeted me as though we were still buddies. On the last occasion that I ran into him, at the hardware store, I inquired, “Do you trust your wife alone with all those men at your house around the clock? Don’t you go to Chicago a lot for business?”

  Instead of taking a swing at me, he replied coolly, “They have a mobile home behind my house.”

  “Come on, Allen, I’ll bet they’re always coming inside to borrow milk while you’re away.”

  “That’s not very funny, John. I’m doing what I think is right.’’ He paid for his machine gun oil or whatever it was and left.

  Well, probably he was doing what he thought was right. Maybe it was right. But I knew that he was one of the people at the club who were making anonymous demands for my expulsion.

  Anyway, in regard to Tuesday early A . M ., even if the FBI came for Frank Bellarosa on another day, I was ready every morning to jump out of bed and be at Alhambra quickly. This was really exciting.

  It was early August now, a time wh
en I should have been in East Hampton. But Dr. Carleton, whoever the hell he was, was in my house with his feet on my furniture, enjoying East End summer fun and the instant respectability of an eighteenth-century shingled house. I’d spoken to the psychiatric gentleman on the phone once to get him squared away with the house, and he’d said to me, “What is your rush in going to closing, if I may ask?”

  “My mother used to take money from my piggy bank and never replaced it. It’s sort of complicated, Doc. Next week, okay?”

  So, I had that date out east and I needed the bucks for the Feds, but the other Feds across the street here wanted to bust my client and I had to stay on top of that, too. It was hard to believe that it was as recently as March when I’d had a safe, predictable life, punctuated only now and then by a friend’s divorce or a revealed marital infidelity and occasionally a death. My biggest problem had been boredom.

  I had called Lester Remsen the day after the battle of McGlade’s and said to him, “Sell twenty thousand dollars’ worth of some crap or another and drop the check with my secretary in Locust Valley.”

  He replied, “This is not the time to sell anything that you’re holding. Your stuff got hit harder than most. Hold on to your positions if you can.”

  “Lester, I read the Wall Street Journal, too. Do as I say, please.”

  “Actually, I was going to phone you. You have margin calls—”

  “How much?”

  “About five. Do you want me to give you an exact figure so you can send me a check? Or, if money is a little tight, John, I can just liquidate more stocks to cover the margin calls.”

  “Sell whatever you have to.”

  “All right. Your portfolio is a little shaky.”

  This is Wall Street talk for, “You’ve made some very stupid investments.’’ Lester and I go back a long way, and even when we’re not speaking, we talk. At least we talk about stocks. I realized I didn’t like stocks or Lester. “Sell everything. Now.”

  “Everything? Why? The market is weak. It will rally in September—”

  “We’ve been talking stocks for twenty years. Aren’t you tired of it?”

  “No.”

  “I am. You know, Lester, if I had spent the last twenty years looking for Captain Kidd’s treasure, I would have lost less money.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “Close my account,’’ I said, and hung up.

  Well, anyway, it was six A . M . on the first Tuesday in August, and I was brooding about this and that. In reality, even if Dr. Carleton wasn’t in my summer house, I wouldn’t be there this August, owing to the fact that my client next door wanted me to stick close. I suppose I could have moved into Alhambra, to be very close, but I don’t think the don wanted me around while he conducted business and consorted with known criminals. And I certainly didn’t want to be a witness to any of that.

  So on that overcast Tuesday morning, I walked out of Susan’s house and began my cross-country trek in a good suit, carrying a big briefcase into which I would place five million dollars in cash and assignable assets with which to make bail.

  I had examined all these assets one night at Bellarosa’s house in order to list and verify them. Thus, I saw a small piece of the don’s empire. Most of what I saw was recorded property deeds, which the court would accept. There were some bearer bonds and a few other odds and ends, together totaling about four million, which would meet even the most excessive bail. But to be certain, Bellarosa had dumped a shopping bag onto his kitchen table that contained a million dollars in cash.

  As I was making my third trip to Alhambra in as many weeks, the birds were singing and the air was still cool. A ground mist sat about chest high on the fields between our property, and it was sort of eerie, as if I were going to Wasp heaven in my Brooks Brothers suit and briefcase.

  I reached the reflecting pool with the statue of Mary and Neptune still glaring at each other, and a figure moved toward me out of the mist. It was Anthony, who was being taken for a walk by a pit bull. He barked at me. The dog, I mean. Anthony said, “Guh mornin’, Mistah Sutta.”

  He must have a sinus condition. “Good morning, Anthony. How is the don this morning?”

  “He’s ’spectin’ ya. I’ll walk ya.”

  “I’ll walk myself, thank you.’’ I proceeded up the path to the house. Anthony was quite nice when you got to know him.

  I approached the rear of the big house, noticing that the security lights were still on. I crossed the big patio and pulled the bell chain. I saw Vinnie through the glass doors politely holstering his gun as he recognized me. “Come on in, Counselor. The boss is in the kitchen.”

  I entered the house at the rear of the palm court, and as I made my way across the large space, I noticed Lenny, the driver, sitting in a wicker chair near one of the pillars, drinking coffee. He, like Vinnie, was wearing a good suit in expectation of visitors and for the possible trip into Manhattan. Lenny stood as I approached and mumbled a greeting, which I made him repeat more distinctly. This was fun.

  I made my way alone through the dark house, through the dining room, morning room, butler’s pantry, and finally into the cavernous kitchen, which smelled of fresh coffee.

  The kitchen had been completely redone, of course, and the don had told me exactly how much it cost to import the half mile or so of Italian cabinetry, the half acre of Italian floor tile, and the marble countertops. The appliances, sensibly, were American.

  The don was sitting at the head of an oblong kitchen table, reading a newspaper. He was dressed in a blue silk pinstripe suit, a light blue shirt, which is better than white for television, and a burgundy tie with matching pocket handkerchief. The newspapers had dubbed him the Dandy Don and I could see why.

  Bellarosa glanced up at me. “Sit, sit.’’ He motioned to a chair and I sat to his right near the head of the table. He poured me coffee while still reading his paper.

  I sipped on the black coffee. I suspected that one would never find a round table in the house of a traditional Italian, because a round table is where equals sat. An oblong table has a head where the patriarch sat. So, there I was, sitting at his right hand, and I wondered if that was significant or if I was getting into this thing too much.

  He glanced up from the newspaper. “So, Counselor, is this the morning?”

  “I hope so. I don’t like getting up this early.”

  He laughed. “Yeah? You don’t like it. You’re not the one going to jail.”

  I’m not the one who’s broken the law for thirty years.

  He put down the newspaper. “I say this is it. The grand jury sat for three weeks. That’s long enough for murder. The RICO shit can take a year, nosing around your business, trying to find what you own and where it came from. Money is complicated. Murder is simple.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Hey, fifty bucks says that this is the morning.”

  “You’re on.”

  “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. You think they’re not going to indict me. You think you squared it with Mancuso.”

  “I never said that. I said I told him what you asked me to tell him—about Ferragamo. I know Mancuso is the type of man who would pass that on to Ferragamo and maybe even to his own superiors. I don’t know what will come of that.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s going to come of it. Nothing. Because that scumbag Ferragamo is not going to back off after making his pitch to a grand jury. That would make him look like a real gavone. But I’m glad you talked to Mancuso. Now Ferragamo knows that Bellarosa knows.’’ Bellarosa went on, “But maybe you shouldn’t’ve told him you were my attorney.”

  “How could I speak to him on your behalf without telling him I was representing you?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. But maybe if you didn’t say anything, he might’ve opened up to you.”

  “That’s unethical and illegal, Frank. Do you want a crooked lawyer or a Boy Scout?”

  He smiled. “Okay. We’ll play you straight.
”

  “I’ll play myself straight.”

  “Whatever.”

  We drank coffee awhile and the don shared his newspaper with me. It was the Daily News, that morning’s city edition, which someone must have delivered to him hot off the printing press in Brooklyn. I flipped through the lead stories, but there was no early warning, no statement from Ferragamo about an imminent arrest. “Nothing about you in here,’’ I said.

  “Yeah. The scumbag’s not that stupid. I got people in the newspapers and he knows it. He’s got to wait for the bulldog edition, about midnight. We’ll get that tonight. This prick loves the newspapers, but he loves TV more. You want something to eat?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You sure? I’ll call Filomena. Come on. Get something to eat. It’s gonna be a long morning. Eat.”

  “I am really not hungry. Really.’’ You know how these people are about eating, and they actually get annoyed when you refuse food, and they’re happy when you eat. Why it matters to them is beyond me.

  Bellarosa motioned to a thick folder on the table. “That’s the stuff.”

  “Right.’’ I put the folder containing the deeds and such in my briefcase.

  Bellarosa produced a large shopping bag from under the table. In the bag was one hundred stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills, a hundred bills in each stack, for a total of one million dollars. It looked good like that.

  He said to me, “Don’t get tempted on the way to court, Counselor.”

  “Money doesn’t tempt me.”

  “Yeah? That’s what you say. Watch, I’ll get to court and find out you cold-cocked Lenny and stole the money. And I’ll be in jail and I get this postcard from you in Rio, and it says, ‘Fuck you, Frank.’” He laughed.

  “You can trust me. I’m a lawyer.”

  That made him laugh even harder for some reason. Anyway, I have this large briefcase, almost a suitcase, that lawyers use when they have to drag forty pounds of paper into court, plus lunch. So I transferred the paper money into the briefcase along with the four million in paper assets. Paper, paper, paper.

  Bellarosa said, “You looked at those deeds and everything the other day, right?”