"I know. But nobody's told these people yet. You go tell Frank the world has changed and tell him to give up every last paesano he knows. Go tell him." I stood to leave. "I suppose if Frank Bellarosa plays by the old rules, then he holds the old world together."

"I think that's it." He added, "But you do have to tell him what Ferragamo said.

Schedule about two minutes for that conversation."

"Right."

"Hey, how does 'Weinstein and Sutter' sound?"

Not real terrific, Jack. But I smiled and replied, "How about 'Sutter, Weinstein and Melzer'?"

He laughed. "Melzer? I wouldn't share a match with that guy." I left Weinstein's office knowing that despite my ambivalent feelings about Frank Bellarosa's being alive, well, and free, I had done my job. But to be certain, I did present Ferragamo's offer to Bellarosa. However, I didn't need a whole two minutes because after about thirty seconds, Bellarosa said to me, "Fuck him."

"That's your final decision?"

"Fuck him and fuck his dog. Who the hell does he think he's dealing with?"

"Well, he just took a shot at it. Don't take it personally. He has a job to do."

"Fuck him and fuck his job."

Pride goeth before the fall. Right?

Anyway, Frank and I and Lenny and Vinnie drove to the rifle club one night. We went down to the basement with a bunch of other sportsmen, all armed with revolvers and automatics, and we blasted away at paper targets and drank wine all night. Jolly fun, almost like bird shooting out in the Hamptons, lacking only a beautiful autumn landscape, tweedy old gentlemen, vintage sherry, and birds. But not bad for Manhattan.

Lenny and Vinnie, as it turned out, were really good shots, which I suppose I should have known. But I discovered it the hard way after losing about two hundred dollars to them on points.

So there I was at a Mafia shooting range, blasting away at paper targets with my wife's boyfriend and his Mafia pals, wondering if perhaps I should have taken in a movie instead. Anyway, we were all a little pie-eyed from the wine, and the shots were getting wilder, and one of the club members presented Bellarosa with a silhouette target on which someone had sketched in the features of Alphonse Ferragamo. The drawing was not Michelangelo quality, but it wasn't bad, and you could identify Alphonse with the owl eyes, aquiline nose, thin lips, and all that. Frank hung the target and put four out of six rounds through its heart at thirty feet, much to everyone's delight. It was not bad shooting considering he'd had enough wine to make him unsteady on his feet. But the whole incident made me a little uncomfortable.

The next few days passed with phone calls and meetings, mostly in the suite. I had expected a man like Bellarosa to have a girlfriend, or many girlfriends, or at least to get someone for a night. But I saw no signs of impropriety during the time we were at the Plaza. Maybe he was being faithful to his wife and his mistress.

As for my impropriety, Bellarosa said to me, "Hey, I don't mind you bring women up here, but no more lady reporters. She's just trying to get something out of you."

"No, she just likes my company."

"Hey, I know that type. They use their twats to get ahead. You don't find that type in my business."

Indeed, no one in Frank's business had female genitalia. If the government couldn't get him on murder or racketeering, maybe they could nail him on discriminatory hiring.

He went on, "I'm telling ya, Counsellor, I'd rather see you talking to the devil than some puttan' who's trying to make a name for herself." Well, what was I going to say? That I was infatuated with Jenny Alvarez and it was strictly personal? I mean, it was hard for me to hold the moral high ground after dragging Ms Alvarez and a bottle of scotch into my room. You know? But did I have to listen to a sermon from Frank Bellarosa? Maybe I did. The Bishop went on, "Men's business is men's business. Women don't play by the same rules."

"Neither do men," I informed him.

"Yeah. But some do. I try to keep my business in the family. You know? My own kind. That's why I had to make you an honorary Italian." He laughed. "Am I Sicilian or a Neapolitan?"

He laughed again. "I'll make you a Roman because you're a pain in the ass."

"I'm honoured."

"Good."

Indeed, everyone in Frank's world was male, and nearly all of them were Italian, and most of them were of Sicilian ancestry or from the city or region of Naples, as Bellarosa's family was. This did make the rules of behaviour and business easier, but there weren't many outside ideas that penetrated this closed world. Jack Weinstein's roots, though, were obviously not southern Italian, and he was perhaps Bellarosa's link to the outside. I had learned, incidentally, that Weinstein's family and Bellarosa's family had known one another in Williamsburg. That section of Brooklyn, you should understand, was not predominantly Italian, but was mostly German, Jewish, and a little Irish. A real melting pot, to use an inaccurate term, since no one mixed much, let alone melted. However, because of the proximities of other cultures, the Williamsburg immigrants were not quite as insular as the immigrants in other areas of New York, who created tight little worlds. Thus, the Williamsburg Italians, such as those around Santa Lucia, went to school with and even made friends with non-Italians. This information came from Mr Bellarosa, who didn't use the words proximity and insular, but I understood what he was saying. Anyway, he and Weinstein went back a lot of years, which I found interesting, and, like me, Jack Weinstein did not want to be, nor could he ever be, under Mafia constitutional law, the don. Thus, Weinstein was Bellarosa's Henry Kissinger, if you'll accept that analogy. So how did I fit into the Bellarosa crime family? Well, I was the noblest Roman of them all.

We checked out of the Plaza on Sunday and returned to Long Island in a three-car convoy, each car packed with Italian men and Italian food. I was in the middle car with Bellarosa, and the interior smelled of ripening cheese and cigars. I didn't know if I would have to boil my clothes or burn them. Regarding Susan, she hadn't called again; at least she hadn't called me again. And I never did return her call and couldn't if I wanted to since I'd thrown away her new unlisted number. So, to be honest, I was a little tense about walking through the front door.

Bellarosa said to me, "The girls will be happy to see us."

I didn't reply.

"They probably thought we were having a good time in the city. Whenever you go away on business, they think you're having a ball. Meantime, you're busting your ass to make a buck. Right?"

"Right."

"Anyway, Anna's cooking all my favourite things tonight." Whereupon he rattled off all his favourite things in this sort of singsong voice that Italians use when talking about food. I actually recognized a few of the things. I'm an honorary Italian. Anyway, this food talk must have made him hungry because he ripped open a bag of biscotti and unwrapped a hunk of cheese that smelled like gym socks. He borrowed a stiletto from Vinnie and went to work on the cheese. Executive lunch. He asked, "Want some?"

"No, thanks."

"You know what a garbage truck is called in an Italian neighbourhood?"

"No, I don't."

"Meals on wheels." He laughed. "Tell me one."

"Did you hear about the dumb Mafia guy who tried to blow up a police car?"

"No."

"He burnt his mouth on the tail pipe."

He liked that one and slid the Plexiglas divider open and told it to Lenny and Vinnie, who laughed, though I could tell they didn't get it. We rode in silence for a while, and I reflected on the present state of affairs. Despite the unspoken and unresolved issues between Frank Bellarosa and me, I was still his lawyer, and if I took him at his word, his friend. I could believe that if it weren't for the fact that I was also his alibi, and he was protecting his interest in me, which sort of coloured things.