The phone rang again and it was Jenny Alvarez with an interesting proposition. I said to her, "Come on up. Tell Lenny or Vinnie it's okay. I'm in the first bedroom to the left."

Later I heard a knock on my bedroom door and she entered. I said to her, "If you like me, why were you so bitchy to me?"

"That's my way."

She took off her shoes, but not her red fuck-me dress, and crawled into bed beside me. What a tease. I wanted to kiss her but I was concerned about the anchovies and garlic on my breath.

I'm not sure what happened next, but when I woke up again before dawn, she was gone. Actually, I doubt she was ever there.

CHAPTER 30

The next morning while having coffee in the suite, I called a few select newspaper people whose names Bellarosa had given me. The story I put out was this: Frank Bellarosa wants a speedy trial within the next month, and any delay on the part of the U.S. Attorney's office would be construed as justice denied. Mr Bellarosa is innocent of the charge and wants to prove so in open court. This, of course, would put Alphonse Ferragamo on the spot to develop a case quickly, and since there apparently was no case, Ferragamo had to either drop the charges or go into court with little chance of winning. Ferragamo wanted to do neither; what he wanted was for someone to knock off Bellarosa soon. Anyway, after coffee that morning in the littered living room of the suite, I went into my bedroom and dialled Susan. "Hello," I said. "Hello," she replied.

"I'll be in the city for a few days and I wanted you to know."

"All right."

"Thank you for packing my bag."

"Think nothing of it," she said.

"Thank you just the same." When husbands and wives get on this frigid roll, you'd think they were total strangers, and they are.

Susan asked, "Did you see my note?"

"Note…? Oh, yes, I did."

"John…?"

"Yes?"

"We really have to talk about it."

"The note?"

"About us."

"Not us, Susan. About you."

She didn't reply for a few seconds, then asked, "What about me? What is really bothering you about me?"

I took a deep breath and said, "Did you call me last night? Did we speak?"

"No."

"Well, then, it was a dream. But it was a very realistic dream, Susan. Actually it was my subconscious mind trying to tell me something. Something I've known for some time, but couldn't come to grips with. Has that ever happened to you in a dream?"

"Maybe."

"Well, in my dream I realized that you were having an affair with Frank Bellarosa."

There, I said it. Well, sort of. She didn't reply for a few seconds, then asked, "Is that why you're in a bad mood? You dreamed that I was having an affair with Frank?"

"I think it was more than a dream. It was a nocturnal revelation. That's what's been bothering me for months, Susan, and it's what has come between us." Again there was a long silence, then she said, "If you suspected something, you should have come to grips with it, John. Instead, you've become withdrawn. You've indulged yourself in playing Mafia mouthpiece and telling off all your friends and family. Maybe what's happened to us is as much your fault as mine." "No doubt about it."

Again, silence, because neither of us wanted to return to the issue of adultery.

But having come this far, I said, "So? Yes or no? Tell me."

She replied, "You had a silly dream."

"All right, Susan. If that's what you say, I will accept that because you've never lied to me."

"John… we have to talk about this… in person. There's probably a lot we've been keeping from each other. You know I would never do anything to hurt you… I'm sorry if you've been upset these last few months… you're a very unique man, a very special man. I realize that now. And I don't want to lose you. I love you." Well, that was about as mushy as Susan ever got, and while it wasn't a full confession of marital infidelity, it was something very like it, sort of like plea bargaining. I was pretty shaky, to be honest with you, and I found myself sitting on the bed in my room, my heart pounding and my mouth dry. If you've ever confronted your spouse with charges of sexual misconduct, you know the feeling. I finally said, "All right. We'll talk when I get back." I hung up and stared at the telephone, waiting, I guess, for it to ring, but it didn't. You have to understand that prior to that day in court and the subsequent media exposure, I wasn't ready to confront this other issue of Susan and Frank. But now, having put my old life behind me forever, and now that I felt good about myself, I was prepared to hear my wife tell me she had been sexually involved with Frank Bellarosa. What's more, I still loved her, and I was prepared to forgive her and start over again, because in a manner of speaking, we'd both had an affair with Frank Bellarosa, and Susan was right that this was as much my fault as hers. But Susan was not yet at the point where she could tell me it had happened or tell him it was over.

So, lacking a confession from Susan, I had to remain in that limbo state of the husband who knows but doesn't know, who can't ask for a divorce or offer to forgive, and who has to deal with the parties as if nothing were going on, lest he make a complete fool of himself.

Or maybe I could just ask Frank, "Hey, goombah, you fucking my wife, or what?" Later that morning, Bellarosa and I met Lenny and Vinnie with the Cadillac outside the plaza. We drove back down to Little Italy where we stopped at Bellarosa's club for espresso. The Italian Rifle Club had few similarities to The Creek, as you might guess, except that it was private and that men discussed things there that had to do with manipulating the republic for the benefit of the club members. Maybe there were more similarities than I realized. That morning Bellarosa had a series of meetings scheduled in his club, which was actually a large storefront with a black-painted picture window, dark inside, and divided into various dim coffee rooms and private rooms. I was pretty much ignored most of the time, and sometimes they spoke in Italian, and sometimes when someone present didn't speak any Italian, I was asked to leave the room with the words, "You don't want to hear this, Counsellor." I was sure they were right.

So I drank a lot of coffee and read all the morning papers and watched some old geezers playing a card game that I couldn't follow.

After an hour or so in the club, we left and got back into the car. Though there was a layer of clouds blocking the sun, the morning was getting hot, an urban heat produced by cars and people and yesterday's sun still trapped in the concrete. Country squires can tolerate only about a week in Manhattan in the summer, and I hoped we wouldn't be much longer in the city, but with this guy you didn't ask questions about times and places.

We made a stop at Ferrara's, where Bellarosa picked out a dozen pastries for Anna, which were put into a nice white box with green and red string and which Bellarosa carried to the car. I can't describe to you why the sight of this big man carrying that little box daintily by the string struck me as so civilized, but it did. It wasn't exactly Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer, but it was a profoundly human act that made me see the man, the husband, and the father. And yes, the lover. Whereas I'd always seen Bellarosa as a man's man, I saw now that my original impression of him as a man whom women would find attractive was accurate. Well, not all women, but some women. I could see Susan, Lady Stanhope, wanting to be debased and sexually used by this insensitive barbarian. Maybe it had something to do with her seeing her mother in bed with a gardener or stableboy or whoever it was. Maybe this is something that all highborn ladies fantasize about: taking off their clothes for a man who is not their social or intellectual equal, but is simply a sexual turn-on. And why should this be such a shock to men? Half the wealthy and successful men I know have screwed their secretaries, cocktail waitresses, and even their maids. Women have libidos, too. But maybe Susan Stanhope and Frank Bellarosa had a more complex relationship.