"Locust Valley."

"Yeah. You don't have far to go home."

"It gets farther every year."

"Well, I like to come down here, you know, to walk on the streets, smell the bakeries, smell the cheese, smell the restaurants. Lots of people come for San Gennaro – you know, the Feast of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Napoli… Naples. They come for St Anthony's feast, too. They come here to eat Italian, see Italians, feel Italian. You understand?"

"Is that why you come here?"

"Yeah. Sometimes. I have some business here, too. I see people here. I got my club here."

"The Italian Rifle Club?"

"Yeah."

"Can you take me there?"

"Sure. You took me to The Creek." He smiled. "I take Jack Weinstein there. He loves it. I get him drunk and take him down to the basement and let him blast the targets. I got a silhouette target down there that says 'Alphonse Ferragamo.'" He laughed.

I smiled. "I think they throw darts at my picture in the IRS office."

"Yeah? Darts? Fuck darts." He stuck his finger at me and cocked his thumb.

"Ba-boom, ba-boom. That's how you make holes in targets." He finished another glass of wine and repoured for both of us. The Chianti was getting better. By the third bottle it would taste like Brunello di Montalcino, 1974.

I looked around the restaurant again. During my mental absence it had gotten full and was noisy now, lively and hopping. I said to Bellarosa, "I like this place."

"Good."

Actually, I was feeling better. Sort of like the high you get after a close call. I couldn't come to terms with the perjury, you understand, but I was working on it. In fact, I took my daybook out of my pocket and, for the first time, turned to January fourteenth. I write in ink, partly because, as an attorney, I know that my daybook is a quasi-legal document and, therefore, should be done in ink in the event it ever had to be shown as evidence. On the other hand, I always use the same pen, the Montblanc with the same nib and the same black Montblanc ink, so if I had to add something after the fact, I could. But I don't like to do that.

Anyway, with some real trepidation, knowing a lot rode on this, I looked at the space for January fourteenth and read: Light snow. Home in A.M., lunch with Susan at Creek, Locust Valley office P.M., meet with staff, 4 P.M. I stared at the entry awhile. Home in A.M. Did I really ride that day? Maybe I did. Did I ride over to Alhambra? Perhaps. Did I see three mafiosi walking around? I said I did.

I began to close the book, but then I noticed the entry for January fifteenth:

7:40 A.M., Eastern flight #119, West Palm Beach. If I had gone to Florida on the morning of the fourteenth, Ferragamo and the FBI would eventually have discovered that by subpoenaing my daybook, or by other means. And John Sutter would be sharing a cell with Frank Bellarosa. But I was in the clear; Home in A.M. The Sutter luck was holding. If I were a Catholic, I would have crossed myself and said the Rosary. I put the book in my pocket. Bellarosa said, "You got someplace else to go?"

"No. Just checking something."

"Yeah? Does it check out?"

"Yes, it does."

"Good." He looked me in the eye. "Grazie," he said, and that was all the thanks or acknowledgement I would ever get, and more than I wanted. Bellarosa said, "I want to take the women here with us at night. You'll like it at night. This old ginzo plays the little squeeze box" – he pantomimed someone playing an accordion – "whaddaya call that? The concertina. And they got this old fat donna who sings like an angel. Your wife will love it." I asked, "Are you safe to be with?"

"Hey, what's this thing you got about that?" He tapped his chest. "If I'm the target, I'm the target. You think anybody gives a shit about you? Just don't get in the way and don't be looking at people's faces. Capisce?" He laughed and slapped my shoulder. "You're funny."

"So are you." I knocked back another glass of that nectar of the gods and asked him, "But how about the other people? The Spanish? The Jamaicans? Do they play by the rules?"

He was chewing on olive pits now and spoke as he chewed. "I'll tell you one rule they play by. They come into Little Italy to make a hit, there won't be a fucking black or Spanish left in New York. They understand that rule. Don't worry about them around here."

I've always like New York because of its ethnic diversity, this great American melting pot. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses… I've forgotten the rest of it. Maybe we've all forgotten it. Bellarosa leaned toward me and said, "As long as this stuff bothers you, you ever think about getting a gun permit?"

"It's not on my "must do" list, no."

"Well, if you're going to be around, you know, you should think about it."

"Why?"

He quoted. " 'Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.' Who said that?"

"Mother Teresa?"

He laughed. "Come on. Machiavelli. Right?"

"Right. Do I get combat pay?"

"Sure. Hey, I owe you fifty large. Right?"

"No. I don't want it."

"That don't matter. You got it."

A waiter set down a platter of antipasto. There seemed to be no sequence to this meal, at least none that I could determine.

Bellarosa pointed to the items on the plate. "That's prosciutto – you know that stuff, right? This is stracchino, and this is taleggio. This cheese here has worms in it, so I won't make you eat it."

"Excuse me?"

"Worms. Little worms. You know? They give the cheese a flavour. You don't eat the worms. You crumble the cheese like this and get the worms out. See? See that one?"

I stood. "Where is the men's room?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Back there." I walked to the men's room, a horrible little place, and washed my face and hands. Worms?

The door opened and Lenny came in. He stood at the sink beside me and combed his greasy hair. He asked me, "You enjoyin' your lunch, Counsellor?" "Shouldn't you be out there keeping an eye on the door?" "Vinnie got two eyes." He washed his hands. "Fucking city. Everything's got dirt on it." He dried his hands on a towel roll that had dirt on it. "You're the don's lawyer, so you're not wired. Correct?"

"Wired? Are you out of your mind?"

"No. Sometimes people got wires. Sometimes they come in the shitter to drop a wire, sometimes to pick up a wire. If I see people go to the shitter when they're talking to the don, I think wire, I think gun."

"I think you've been watching too much TV."

He chuckled. "So? You mind?" He held out his clean hands toward me. I stood there a moment, then nodded. The son of a bitch gave me a thorough frisking, then said, "Okay. Just checking. Everybody got a job." I put a quarter on the sink. "That's for you, Lenny. Good job." I left. Boy, I was really getting the hang of it now. I returned to the table and saw that the worm cheese had been removed from the antipasto.

Frank said, "Yeah. I got rid of that for you. You find the back'ouse okay?"

"The what?"

He laughed. "The back house. Back'ouse, they say in Little Italy. From when it was out back. You know?"

"Yes, I found it." I saw Lenny return to his table, glaring at me as he sat. I asked Bellarosa, "Did you send him in to frisk me?"

"Nah. He just does it. Look, I know Mancuso tried to get to you, and I trust you more than I trust a lot of my own people. But when I know I'm talking to a guy who's clean, I feel better."

"Mr Bellarosa, a lawyer cannot, may not, will not, act as an agent for the government against his own client."

"Yeah. But maybe you're writing a book." He laughed. "Fuck it. Let's eat. Here. This is called manteche. No worms." He put a piece of the cheese on a biscuit he called frisalle and held it near my mouth. "Come on. Try that." I tried it. It wasn't bad. I sipped some Chianti and popped a black olive in my mouth. These people dined out differently from what I was used to. For instance, none of the previous plates had been cleared, and Bellarosa returned to his fried squid.