The Gold Coast

by Nelson DeMille

  My mother snapped, “What a hateful thing to say,’’ but my father actually looked saddened and mumbled, “All right.”

  In the Bronco on the way back to East Hampton, Susan asked me, “Will you regret that?”

  “No.”

  Carolyn spoke up from the backseat, “Did you mean it?”

  “Yes.”

  Edward said, “I kinda feel sorry for them.”

  Edward does not love all of humanity, but he likes people, and he feels sorry for everyone. Carolyn feels sorry for no one, Susan doesn’t know what sorrow is, and I . . . well, sometimes I feel sorry for myself. But I’m working on that.

  Actually, telling people what you think of them is not difficult, because they already know it and are probably surprised you haven’t said it sooner.

  I knew, too, that breaking off my relationship with my parents was good training for ending other relationships. I think Susan, who is no fool, knew this, too, because she said to me, “Judy Remsen told me that you told Lester to go F himself. Is anyone else on your list?”

  Quick wit that I am, I pulled a gasoline receipt from my pocket and pretended to study it as I drove. “Let’s see here . . . nine more. I’ll call your parents tomorrow, so that will leave only seven . . .”

  She didn’t reply, because there were children present.

  • • •

  We drove back to Stanhope Hall on Monday, and for the next few days our house was lively as the children’s friends came and went. I actually like a house full of teenagers on school break, and in short doses. At Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving especially, the presence of kids in the house lends something extra to the holiday mood and reminds me, I suppose, of my own homecomings from school.

  The children of the old rich and privileged are, if nothing else, polite. They are acculturated early and know how to make conversations with adults. They’d rather not, of course, but they’re learning early how to do things they don’t want to do. They will be successful and unhappy adults.

  Carolyn and Edward had booked flights on separate days, naturally, so that meant two trips to Kennedy Airport at inconvenient hours. It’s times like those when I miss chauffeurs. We could have packed them off in hired limos, I suppose, but after telling my own parents to buzz off, I was feeling a wee bit . . . something.

  After my children left, the house was quiet, and it rained for a few days straight. I went to the Locust Valley office to fill up the days, but didn’t accomplish much except to find the file I needed on the East Hampton house. I spent a day figuring out my expenses on the house, so that when it was sold, I could calculate my profit accurately, and thus figure out my capital gains. Of course, as before, I could reinvest the so-called profit in another house and defer the tax, but I knew that I would not be buying another house in the near future; perhaps never. This realization, which was forced on me by the mundane act of having to crunch numbers, sort of hit me hard. It wasn’t simply a matter of money that made me realize there would be no new house in my future; I might be doing very well in two years. It was more, I think, a decision on my part to stop making long-range plans. Modern life was geared toward a reasonably predictable future; thirty-year mortgages, seven-year certificates of deposit, hog belly futures, and retirement plans. But recent events convinced me that I can neither predict nor plan for the future, so screw the future. When I got there, I’d know what to do; I always know what to do in foreign countries. Why not the future?

  The past was another story. You couldn’t change it, but you could break away from it and leave it and the people in it behind. My objective, I suppose, was to float in a never-ending present, like the captain of the Paumanok, dealing with the moment’s realities, aware but not concerned about where I’ve been and charting a general course forward, subject to quick changes depending on winds, tides, and whatever I could see on the immediate horizon.

  As I was getting ready to leave the office, my phone rang and my secretary, Anne, came into my office instead of buzzing me. “Mr. Sutter, I know you said no calls, but it is your father.”

  I sat there a moment, and for no particular reason, I saw us on that boat again, he and I, nearly forty years ago, in the harbor at night, and saw this sort of close-up of my hand in his, but then my hand slipped out of his hand, and I reached for him again, but he had moved away and was talking to someone, perhaps my mother.

  “Mr. Sutter?”

  I said to her, “Tell him I do not wish to speak to him.”

  She seemed not at all surprised, but simply nodded and left. I watched the green light on my phone, and in a few seconds it was gone.

  From the office, I went directly to my boat and sat in the cabin, listening to the rain. It was not a night you would choose to go out into, but if you had to go out, you could, and if you had been caught by surprise in the wind and rain, you could ride it through. There were other storms that presented more of a challenge, and some that were clear and imminent dangers. Some weather was just plain death.

  There were obviously certain elemental lessons that you learned from the sea, most of them having to do with survival. But we tend to forget the most elemental lessons, or don’t know when they apply. This is how we, as sailors, get ourselves into trouble.

  We can be captains of our fate, I thought, but not masters of it. Or as an old sailing instructor told me when I was a boy, “God sends you the weather, kid. What you do with it or what it does to you depends on how good a sailor you are.”

  That about summed it up.

  Twenty-two

  Friday morning dawned bright and clear. Susan was up and out riding before I was even dressed.

  She had finished the painting next door, and we were to have an unveiling at the Bellarosas’ as soon as Anna found the right place for the painting, and Susan found an appropriate frame. I couldn’t wait.

  I was having my third cup of coffee, trying to decide what to do with the day, when the phone rang. I answered it in the kitchen, and it was Frank Bellarosa. “Whaddaya up to?’’ he asked.

  “Seven.”

  “What?”

  “I’m up to seven. What are you up to?”

  “Hey, I gotta ask you something. Where’s the beach around here?”

  “There are a hundred miles of beaches around here. Which one did you want?”

  “There’s that place at the end of the road here. The sign says no trespassing. That mean me?”

  “That’s Fox Point. It’s private property, but everyone on Grace Lane uses the beach. No one lives there anymore, but we have a covenant with the owners.”

  “A what?”

  “A deal. You can use the beach.”

  “Good, ’cause I was down there the other day. I didn’t want to be trespassing.”

  “No, you don’t want to do that.’’ Was this guy kidding or what? I added, “It’s a misdemeanor.”

  “Yeah. We got a thing in the old neighborhoods, you know? You don’t shit where you live, you don’t spit on the sidewalk. You go to Little Italy, for instance, you behave.”

  “Except for the restaurant rubouts.”

  “That’s different. Hey, take a walk with me down there.”

  “Little Italy?”

  “No. Fox Place.”

  “Fox Point.”

  “Yeah. I’ll meet you at my fence.”

  “Gatehouse?”

  “Yeah. Fifteen, twenty minutes. Show me this place.”

  I assumed he wanted to discuss something and didn’t want to do it on the telephone. In our few phone conversations, there was never anything said that would even suggest that I might be his attorney. I think he wanted to spring this on Ferragamo and the New York press as a little surprise at some point.

  “Okay?’’ he asked.

  “Okay.”

  I hung up, finished my coffee, put on jeans and Docksides, and made sure twenty minutes passed before I began the ten-minute walk to Alhambra’s gates. But was the son of a bitch pacing impatiently for me? No. I went t
o the gatehouse and banged on the door. Anthony Gorilla opened up. “Yeah?”

  I could see directly into the small living room, not unlike the Allards’ little place, the main difference being that sitting around the room was another gorilla whom I supposed was Vinnie and two incredibly sluttish-looking women who might be Lee and Delia. The two sluts and the gorilla seemed to be smirking at me, or perhaps it was my imagination.

  Anthony repeated his greeting. “Yeah?”

  I turned my attention back to Anthony and said, “What the hell do you think I’m here for? If I’m expected, you say, ‘Good morning, Mr. Sutter. Mr. Bellarosa is expecting you.’ You do not say ‘yeah?’ Capisce?”

  Before Anthony could make his apologies or do something else, don Bellarosa himself appeared at the door and said something to Anthony in Italian, then stepped outside and led me away by the arm.

  Bellarosa was wearing his standard uniform of blazer, turtleneck, and slacks. The colors this time were brown, white, and beige, respectively. I saw, too, as we walked, that he had acquired a pair of good Docksides, and on his left wrist was a black Porsche watch, very sporty at about two thousand bucks. The man was almost getting it, but I didn’t know how to bring up the subject of his nylon stretch socks.

  As we walked up Grace Lane, toward Fox Point, Bellarosa said, “That’s not a man you want to piss off.”

  “That’s a man who had better not piss me off again.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Listen to me. If you invite me to your property, I want your flunkies to treat me with respect.”

  He laughed. “Yeah? You into the respect thing now? You Italian, or what?”

  I stopped walking. “Mr. Bellarosa, you tell your goons, including your imbecile driver, Lenny, and the half-wits and sluts in that gatehouse, and anyone else you have working for you, that don Bellarosa respects Mr. John Sutter.”

  He looked at me for about half a minute, then nodded. “Okay. But you don’t keep me waiting again. Okay?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  We continued our walk up Grace Lane, and I wondered how many people saw us from their ivory towers. Bellarosa said, “Hey, your kid came over the other day. He tell you?”

  “Yes. He said you showed him around the estate. That was very good of you.”

  “No problem. Nice kid. We had a nice talk. Smart like his old man. Right? Up-front like his old man, too. Asked me where I got all the money to build up the estate.”

  “I certainly didn’t teach him to ask questions like that. I hope you told him it was none of his business.”

  “Nah. I told him I worked hard and did smart things.”

  I made a mental note to talk to Edward about the wages of sin and about crime doesn’t pay. Frank Bellarosa’s advice to his children was probably less complex and summed up in three words: Don’t get caught.

  We reached the end of Grace Lane, which is a wide turnaround in the center of which rises a jagged rock about eight feet high. There is a legend that says that Captain Kidd, who is known to have buried his treasure on Long Island’s North Shore, used this rock as the starting point for his treasure map. I mentioned this to Bellarosa and he asked, “Is that why this place is called the Gold Coast?”

  “No, Frank. That’s because it’s wealthy.”

  “Oh, yeah. Anybody find the treasure?”

  “No, but I’ll sell you the map.”

  “Yeah? I’ll give you my deed to the Brooklyn Bridge for it.”

  I think my wit was rubbing off on him.

  We walked up to the entrance to Fox Point, whose gatehouse was a miniature castle. The entire front wall of the estate was obscured by overgrown trees and bushes, and none of the estate grounds were visible from Grace Lane. I produced a key and opened the padlock on the wrought-iron gates, asking Bellarosa, “How did you get in here?”

  “It was opened when I got here. Some people were on the beach. Do I get one of those keys?”

  “I suppose you do. I’ll have one made for you.’’ Normally, anyone who opens the padlock does not bother to lock it behind them, which was how Bellarosa had gotten in. But there was something about this man that made me rethink every simple and mundane action of my life. I had visions of his goons following us, or somebody else’s goons following us, or even Mancuso showing up. In truth, you could scale the wall easily enough, but nevertheless, after we passed through the gates, I closed them again, reached through the bars and snapped the padlock shut. I said to Bellarosa, “Are you armed?”

  “Does the Pope wear a cross?”

  “I imagine he does.’’ We began walking down the old drive, which had once been paved with tons of crushed seashells, but over the years, dirt, grass, and weeds have nearly obliterated them. The trees that lined the drive, mostly mimosa and tulip trees, were so overgrown that they formed a tunnel not six feet wide and barely high enough to walk through without ducking.

  The drive curved and sloped down toward the shoreline, and I could see daylight at the end of the trees. We broke out into a delightful stretch of waterfront that ran about a mile along the Sound from Fox Point on the east to a small, nameless sand spit on the west. The thick vegetation ended where we were standing, and on the lower ground was a thin strip of windblown trees, then bulrushes and high grasses, and finally the rocky beach itself.

  Bellarosa said, “This is a very nice place.”

  “Thank you,’’ I said, leaving him with the impression I had something to do with it.

  We continued downhill along the drive, which was lined now with only an occasional salt-stunted pine or cedar. The drive led us to the ruin of the great house of Fox Point. The house, built in the early 1920s, was unusual for its day, a sort of contemporary structure of glass and mahogany with flat roofs, open decks, and pipe railings, resembling, perhaps, a luxury liner, and nearly as large. The house had been gutted by fire about twenty years ago, but no one had actually lived in it since the 1950s. Sand dunes had drifted in and around the long rambling ruin, and I was always struck by the thought that it looked like the collapsed skeleton of some fantastic sea creature that had washed ashore and died. But I do remember seeing the house before it burned, though only from a long distance when I was boating on the Sound. I had often thought I would like to live in it and watch the sea from its high decks.

  Bellarosa studied the ruins for a while, then we walked on toward the beach. Fox Point had been, even by Gold Coast standards, a fabulous estate. But over the years the waterside terraces, the bathhouses, boathouses, and piers have been destroyed by storms and erosion. Only two intact structures now remained on the entire estate: the gazebo and the pleasure palace. The gazebo sat precariously on an eroded shelf of grassland, ready to float away in the next nor’easter.

  Bellarosa pointed to the gazebo and said, “I don’t have one of those.”

  “Take that one before the sea does.”

  He studied the octagonal structure from a distance. “I can take it?”

  “No one cares. Except the Gazebo Society, and they’re all nuts.”

  “Oh, yeah. Your wife paints those things.”

  “No, she has lunch in them.”

  “Right. I’ll have Dominic look at it.”

  I gazed out over the Sound. It was a bright blue day, and the water sparkled, and colored sails slid back and forth on the horizon, and in the distance the Connecticut coast was clear. It was a nice day to be alive, so far.

  Bellarosa turned away from the gazebo and looked farther down the shore toward a building that sat well back from the beach on a piece of solid land protected by a stone bulkhead. He pointed. “What’s that? I saw that the other day.”

  “That’s the pleasure palace.”

  “You mean like for fun?”

  “Yes. For fun.’’ In fact, the wealthiest and most hedonistic of the Gold Coast residents constructed these huge pleasure palaces, away from their mansions, the sole purpose of which was fun. Fox Point’s pleasure palace was constructed of steel and masonr
y, and during the Second World War the Coast Guard found the building convenient for storing ammunition. But as solid as it looks, or may have looked to German U-boats, from the air you can see that most of the roof is made of blue glass. Actually, on occasions that I’ve flown over the Gold Coast in a small plane, I could spot this and other surviving pleasure palaces because they all have these shimmering blue roofs.

  Bellarosa asked, “What kind of fun?”

  “Sex, gambling, drinking, tennis. You name it.”

  “Show me it.”

  “All right.”

  We walked the hundred yards to the huge structure, and I led him inside through a broken glass door.

  The athletic wings of the pleasure palace resembled a modern health club, but there were touches of art nouveau elegance in the mosaic tile floors and iron-filigreed windows. Considering that it hadn’t been used since about 1929, it wasn’t in bad shape.

  In one wing of the building, there was a regulation-size clay tennis court covered by a thirty-foot-high blue-glass roof. The roof leaked, and the clay had crumbled long ago, and it sprouted some sort of odd plant life that apparently liked clay and blue light. There was no net on the court, so Bellarosa, who had shown some confusion in the past regarding interior design, asked me, “What’s this place?”

  “The drawing room.”

  “No shit?”

  We walked through the larger adjoining wing, which was a full gymnasium, into the next section of the building, which held an Olympic-size swimming pool, also covered with blue glass. Adjacent to the gym and pool were steam rooms, showers, rubdown rooms, and a solarium. The west wing, more luxurious, contained overnight guest accommodations, including a kitchen and servants’ quarters.

  Bellarosa said very little as I gave him the tour, but at one point he remarked, “These people lived like Roman emperors.”

  “They gave it their best shot.”

  We found the east wing, which was a cavernous ballroom where Susan and I had once gone to a Roaring Twenties party. “Madonn’ !’’ said Frank. “Yes,’’ I agreed. I remembered that there was a cocktail lounge near the ballroom, actually a speakeasy, as this place was built during Prohibition, but I couldn’t find it. Walking through this building under the ghostly blue-glass roofs, even I, who have lived among Gold Coast ruins all my life, was awed by the size and opulence of this pleasure palace. We had retraced our steps and were back at the mosaic pool now. I said to Bellarosa, “We have to hold a Roman orgy here. You bring the beer.”