The Gold Coast

by Nelson DeMille

  “We all were.”

  “Yeah.’’ We got back into the car and drove some blocks to a better street, and he showed me the five-story brownstone where he and Anna had spent much of their married life. He said, “I still own the building. I made apartments on each floor and I got a bunch of old people in there. I got an old aunt in there. They pay what they can to the church. You know? The church takes care of the whole thing. It’s a good building.”

  I asked, “Are you trying to get into heaven?”

  “Yeah, but not this week.’’ He laughed, then added, “Everything’s got an angle, Counselor.”

  We drove around the old Italian section of Williamsburg, which had never been very large, and what was left of Italian Williamsburg seemed rather forlorn, but there were stops to be made, and the trip was not all nostalgia, but partly business. As I said, it must be difficult to run a crime empire when you can’t use the telephone, or even the mail for that matter. And this fact obviously necessitated a lot of driving and quick stops to call on people. Frank was the three-minute Mafia manager.

  After Williamsburg, we drove into more lively Italian neighborhoods in Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, and Coney Island, where we made more stops and saw more people, mostly in restaurants and in the back of retail stores and in social clubs. I was quite honestly amazed at the number of branch offices and affiliates of Bellarosa, Inc.—or would one say franchises and chain outlets? More amazing, there didn’t seem to be any written list of these stops. Bellarosa would just say a few words to Lenny and Vinnie, such as, “Let’s see Pasquale at the fish place,’’ and they’d drive somewhere. I could hardly believe that their pea-size brains could retain so many locations, but I guess they had good incentives to do their job.

  We left Brooklyn and went into Ozone Park, Queens, which is also an Italian neighborhood. Frank had some relatives there, and we stopped at their row house and played boccie ball in an alleyway with a bunch of his old goombahs who wore baggy pants and three-day whiskers. Then we all drank homemade red wine on a back porch, and it was awful, awful stuff, tannic and sour. But one of the old men put ice in my wine and mixed it with cream soda, of all things. Then he sliced peaches into my glass. Frank had his wine the same way. It was sort of like Italian sangria, I guess, or wine coolers, and I had an idea to market the concoction and sell it to trendy places like Buddy’s Hole where the clientele could drink it with their grass clippings. Ozone Park Goombah Spritzers. No? Yes?

  Anyway, we moved on into the late afternoon, making a few more stops at modest-looking frame houses in other Queens neighborhoods.

  Frank Bellarosa had entertained the movers and shakers of his world, the chiefs and the “made men,’’ at the Plaza Hotel. Now he was going out into the streets to talk to his constituents, like a politician running for office. But unlike a candidate, I never heard him make any promises, and unlike a Mafia don, I never heard him make a threat. He was just “showing his face around,’’ which seemed to be an expression with these people that I kept hearing. Showing your face around must have a lot of subtle connotations, and must be important if Bellarosa was doing it.

  The man had a natural instinct for power, I’ll say that for him. He comprehended on some level that real power is not based on terror, or even on loyalty to an abstract idea or organization. Real power was based on personal loyalty, especially the loyalty of the masses to the person of don Bellarosa, as I witnessed with the sausage vendor and with everyone else we’d stopped to see. Truly the man was an intuitive and charismatic leader—the last of the great dons.

  And as evil as he was, I nearly felt sorry for him, surrounded now by enemies within and without. But I had also felt sorry for proud Lucifer in Paradise Lost when he was brought down by God and heaven’s host of goody-goody androgynous angels. There must be a serious flaw in my character.

  We headed back to Manhattan after dark. New York is truly a city of ethnic diversity, but I don’t have much occasion or desire to hang around with the ethnics. However, I have to admit that I was intrigued by the Italian subculture that I had caught a glimpse of that day. It was a world that seemed both alive and dying at the same time, and I remarked to Bellarosa in the car back to Manhattan, “I thought all that Italian stuff was a thing of the past.”

  He seemed to understand what I meant and replied, “It is in the past. It was past when my old man took me around on Saturdays to sit with the goombahs and sip wine and talk. It’s always in the past.”

  The old immigrant cultures, I reflected, still exerted a powerful influence on their people and on American society. But truly they were losing their identity as they became homogenized, and ironically they were losing their power as they filled the vacuum created by the so-called decline of the Wasp. But more important, back there in the shadows, somewhere in the outer boroughs, were the new immigrants, the future that neither Frank Bellarosa nor I understood or wished to contemplate.

  As the car approached the skyline of Manhattan, Bellarosa said to me, “You have a good time today?”

  “It was interesting.”

  “Yeah. Sometimes I have to just get out and see these people. You know? To see that everybody’s still out there. I’ve been losing touch, kind of holed up at Alhambra. You can’t do that. You go out there and if somebody wants to take a pop at you, then at least you went down out on the street, and not holed up someplace waiting for them to corner you. You know?”

  “Yes, I do. But do you need a lawyer along while you’re tempting fate?”

  “No. I need a friend.”

  I had several sarcastic replies right on the tip of my tongue, but I said nothing, which said it all.

  He added, “I’m gonna make you into an honorary Italian like Jack Weinstein. You like that?”

  “Sure, as long as that doesn’t make me an honorary target.”

  He sort of laughed, but I think he was finding less humor in the subject of his assassination. He did say, however, “I talked to some people. You got nothing to worry about. You’re still a civilian.”

  Great news. And I trusted these people, right? Well at least they probably all belonged to the rifle club and were good marksmen. I surely hoped so.

  Thirty-one

  We went back to the Plaza Hotel. Bellarosa gave Vinnie and Lenny the night off, and Frank and I ordered dinner in the suite.

  As we ate at the table in the dining area, we made small talk, mostly about vegetables and real estate. I sliced my steak, and as I did so, I wondered what new and exciting course my life would take if I plunged my steak knife into Bellarosa’s heart.

  I think he was reading my thoughts because he said, “You know, Counselor, you’re probably thinking that your life is getting fucked up and you think I fucked it up for you. Wrong. You fucked yourself up and you did it before you ever laid eyes on me.”

  “Maybe. But you’re not part of the solution.”

  “Sure I am. I helped you get rid of all the bullshit in your life. So now you got to go on.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Yeah. You think I’m some kind of dumb greaseball. Wrong again.”

  I was getting a little annoyed with this guy now. I said, “Stupid people think you’re stupid. I know better.”

  He smiled. “Yeah. It’s an old Italian trick. Claudius did it to save his life before he became emperor. There’s a guy in my business up in the Bronx—you know the guy—he’s been acting simpleminded for ten years because the Feds are on his case. You know? But Ferragamo is stupid and he thinks I’m stupid, so I surprise him every time, but he’s too stupid to get it.’’ He laughed.

  We went back to our steaks and didn’t speak until coffee, then he asked me, “You ever play dumb?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Like, I mean, you know something, but you don’t let on you know. You hold on to it until the right time. You don’t go off hot and get yourself hurt. You wait.”

  I replied, “Sometimes I never let on. Sometimes I just let the other guy go crazy wond
ering if I know.”

  He nodded appreciatively. “Yeah. Like what, for instance? Give me a for instance.”

  We looked at each other across the table, and I replied, “Like the bullshit with the IRS, Frank. You told Melzer to go to his friends in the IRS and see if they could find something on me, and they did. Then you turn me on to Melzer, who fixes things for me, and I owe you a favor. You’re a real pal.”

  He played around with his dessert and didn’t reply.

  I asked, “But what if I hadn’t come to you with the problem?”

  He shrugged.

  “Then,’’ I said, “you’d find another problem for me. Or maybe I’d need another kind of favor from you, like the variance for the stables. I’m not sure that was a coincidence or a setup, but apparently you have my wife’s ear, so you can get to me through her.”

  The man obviously knew there was trouble between Susan and me, and if he had a conscience at all, it was a guilty one. In fact, he actually looked uncomfortable. I mean, beyond class differences and political differences, and ethnic and racial tensions, and all the other problems that people have with one another in society, the most primitive and elemental cause of violence, murder, and mayhem is sexual possessiveness. To put it more simply, people get angry when other people are fucking or trying to fuck their mate. Anyway, Bellarosa must have been feeling a little uneasy or he wouldn’t have prodded me into the subject to see my reaction. He looked at me, waiting to see, I think, if I was actually going to broach the subject of him and Susan. But since it was he who was feeling a little uneasy, not me, I decided to leave him hanging awhile longer.

  Without a word, I stood and went to the sideboard on which were a few dozen telephone messages, one of which was from Susan advising me that she’d changed her telephone number. I suppose the media were getting to her, not to mention our friends and relatives. I threw the message with the new phone number in the wastebasket and left the suite.

  Down in the lobby, I was accosted by none other than Jenny Alvarez, the lady in red, except that she was not wearing red that evening. “Hello, Mr. Sutter,’’ she said.

  She was, in fact, wearing a black silk dress, sort of an evening dress, I guess, as if she’d just come from dinner. She really looked good, and I wanted to ask her if we’d spent the night together, but it seemed like a silly question, so I just replied, “Hello.”

  “Can I buy you a drink?’’ she asked.

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Coffee?”

  “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  She seemed hurt, and I began to believe we really had spent the night together. I’m a lot of things, but a cad isn’t one of them, so I accepted the offer of a drink, and we went into the Oak Bar and got a table. She ordered a scotch and soda, and I made it two. She said, “I saw the statements you made to the newspapers this morning.”

  “I didn’t know TV journalists read the papers. Or read at all.”

  “Don’t be a snot.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, I’d like to do an interview with you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It won’t take long. We can do it right here in the Plaza, live for the eleven-o’clock news.”

  “I’d be dead for the morning news.”

  She laughed as though this were a joke. This was not a joke. She said, “Could you get Mr. Bellarosa to join you?”

  “I think not.”

  “Maybe we could tape an in-depth interview and run it on our nightly news show at eleven-thirty. That’s a national show. That would give you both an opportunity to present your side of the case.”

  “We’re actually going to present our side in court.”

  So we went on in this vein for a while, Ms. Alvarez thinking I was playing hard to get, and I, to be honest, not blowing her off because I was enjoying the company. She had nice full lips.

  We ordered a second round. She could not comprehend, of course, that not everyone in America wanted to be on television. Finally, growing a little weary with her obsessive badgering, I said, “I had a dream last night that I slept with you.”

  She seemed like a tough sort of lady who’d heard it all before, but this took her by surprise, and she actually got flustered. I was smitten. I said, “Look, Ms. Alvarez—can I call you Jenny?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look, Jenny, you must know that these people don’t appear on TV shows. You have a better chance of getting the Premier of the Soviet Union on your show than getting Frank Bellarosa.”

  She nodded, but only, I think, to get her brain working better. She said, “But you are not in the Mafia—”

  “There is no Mafia.”

  “You can talk to us. Mr. Ferragamo has agreed to come on the show—”

  “He’d do a sitcom if the ratings were high enough.”

  She giggled. “Come on, Mr. Sutter . . . John. Don’t you see how this can help your client?”

  So we began round three with another round of drinks. She went on for a while, making a good case for television exposure, but I’m afraid I wasn’t paying much attention. I said, “It was a very realistic dream.”

  She replied, “Look, if it means getting you on the air . . .”

  I paid more attention. “Yes?”

  “Well . . . we can scramble you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know. Scramble your face and voice. No one will know it’s you.”

  “Unless you introduce me by name.”

  “Don’t be silly. What would be the point of—?”

  “You had on that red dress.”

  “The scrambled interview would have a different slant, of course. Not John Sutter as attorney, but as an unidentified source. We’ve done that before with organized crime reports. You’d talk about—”

  “Do you have an apartment in town?”

  Round three ended in a draw, and we went to round four, both optimistic. At seven bucks a pop in the Oak Bar, one of us was down fifty-six dollars already, plus tax and tip. There was a bowl of really good smoked almonds on the next table, but our table had a bowl of those disgusting goldfish pretzels. They’re all over the place.

  She went on again, glancing at her watch a few times. I asked, “Are you doing the news tonight?”

  “I don’t think I have a story tonight since you’re not cooperating.”

  “Do you get paid anyway?”

  “Maybe. Look, at least consider the news show at eleven-thirty. We have a show put together, but we need a focus.”

  “Does that mean you won’t scramble my face?”

  “I mean an angle. I want someone to speak intelligently about different aspects of this case. I don’t want any more so-called experts. I want someone who can give the American public the other side of this issue.”

  “What other side?”

  “The constitutionality of RICO, the government’s harassment of certain ethnic groups under the guise of justice, Ferragamo’s statements about a possible gang war between Hispanics and Italians. That sort of thing. I really want to get a different view on this thing.”

  “Sounds like a good show. I’ll watch it.”

  “Let’s go talk to Mr. Bellarosa. See if he wants to be interviewed. See if he wants his attorney to go on.”

  “Stay here.’’ I stood. “See if you can get a bowl of smoked almonds.’’ I went out to a house phone and called the suite, but Bellarosa’s line was busy. I had no intention of presenting Ms. Alvarez’s offer to him, but I wanted to see if he was still in. I went back to the Oak Bar, sat, and informed Ms. Alvarez, “He says no. And no means no.’’ She had gotten the smoked almonds and I took a handful.

  “Then how about you?’’ she asked. “Will you go on the air?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “I take off the red dress.”

  “Before or after I go on the air?”

  She looked at her watch. “Before.’’ She added, “Fuck me, but don’t screw me.”

&n
bsp; We both smiled. Well, dreams do come true if you let them. But this one looked like trouble. I stood. “Sorry. I can’t live up to my end of the deal. But it’s been fun.’’ I left her with the tab.

  In the lobby, I checked for messages, and there were a few from TV, press, and radio people. Most criminal attorneys would parlay this opportunity into fame and fortune. But mob attorneys such as Jack Weinstein and John Sutter had to satisfy themselves with “No comment’’ and tainted money that could be seized under the RICO Act. Hey, who said this was going to be good for my career?

  Anyway, I turned toward the lobby doors, intending to take the walk I had intended to take before, but once again I was waylaid by Jenny Alvarez. She said, “Let me ask you a question. A personal question, off the record.”

  “I like the regular missionary position, but I’m open to anything.”

  “What I want to know is, why did you get involved with Frank Bellarosa?”

  “It’s a long story. Truly it is.”

  “I mean, I saw your estate out there on Long Island. My God, I didn’t think people still lived like that.”

  “I live in the guesthouse on the estate. You got that wrong on TV. And what difference does it make where I live?”

  “It makes all the difference. We’re talking TV, John. Entertainment. You’re a star. You look like a star. You act like a star. You’re well dressed, you carry yourself well, and you speak extremely well. You’re a class act.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Even if you did stick me with the tab.”

  “That’s the classiest thing I’ve done all week. Look . . . Jenny, you’re very attractive, and I’d like to take you upstairs, but I think you’re giving me a line of bull because you want something from me, and it’s not sex. And I can’t deliver, not sex or information. I’m a faithful husband, plus I’m impotent and simpleminded. So—”

  “What’s the matter?”