He didn't even hesitate. "You ask, you get. I owe you my life." I nodded. "Well, let me think about it. Maybe I can come up with a bigger and better favour."

"Sure. Hey, stop by again."

I opened the door, then turned back to him. "Hey, these Indians are standing on the beach, you know, and Columbus comes ashore and says to them 'Buon giorno,' and one of the Indians turns to his wife and says 'Shit, there goes the neighbourhood.'" As I closed the door behind me, I heard him laughing and coughing.

CHAPTER 36

I finally decided to go to my Wall Street office to tidy up my affairs there. I sat in my office, my father's old office, and wondered how I could have wasted so many years of my life in that place. But by an act of pure will, I got down to work and did for my firm and my clients basically what I'd done in the Locust Valley office; that is, I wrote memos on each client and each case, and I parcelled everything out to specific attorneys who I thought would be best suited to each case and each client. That was more than my father had done, and more than Frederic Perkins had done before he jumped from the window down the hall.

Anyway, despite my loyalty and conscientiousness, I was as welcome at 23 Wall Street as a four-hundred-point drop in the Dow. Nevertheless, I soldiered on for over a week, speaking to no one but my secretary, Louise, who seemed annoyed at me for having left her holding the bag for the last several months, trying to answer all sorts of questions from clients and partners regarding Mr Sutter's files and cases.

Anyway, in order to put in long days in the Wall Street office, and for other reasons, I was living at the Yale Club in Manhattan. This is a very large and very comfortable establishment on Vanderbilt Avenue, and the rooms are quite nice. Breakfast and dinner aren't bad either, and the bar is friendly. There's a stock market Teletype off the cocktail lounge so you can see if you can afford the place; there's a gym with a swimming pool and squash courts, and the clientele is Yale. What more can a man ask for? One could almost stay here forever, and many members in my situation would do just that, but the club discourages overly long stays for wayward husbands, and in recent years, wayward wives. Regarding the latter, one could get into trouble at the club, but I had enough trouble, so after dinner I would just read the newspapers in the big lounge and have a cigar and port like the other old tweedbags, then go to bed. I did bring Jenny Alvarez to dinner one night, and she said, apropos of the club, "What a world you live in."

"I guess I never gave it much thought."

We chatted about the World Series, and she needled me about the Mets' pathetic four-in-a-row loss to the Yankees. Who would have believed it? Anyway, we talked about everything except Bellarosa, television news, and sex, just to show each other, I guess, that we had a solid friendship based on many mutual interests. Actually as it turned out, other than baseball, we shared almost no interests. We wound up talking about kids, and she showed me a picture of her son. And though it was obvious that we were still hot for each other, I didn't ask her up to my room.

Well, I wound up spending nearly two weeks at the Yale Club, which was convenient in regard to not having to deal with friends and family on Long Island. On the weekend, I visited Carolyn and Edward at their schools. By the middle of the following week, I had about run out of excuses for staying away from Lattingtown, so I checked out of the Yale Club and went back to Stanhope Hall to discover that Susan was about to leave for another visit to Hilton Head and Key West. You may envy people like us for the time and money we have to spend avoiding unpleasantness, and you may be right in being envious. But in my case, at least, the money was running out and so was the time, and the hurt was no less acute than if I'd been a contractor or a civil servant. Clearly, something had to be done. I said to Susan before she left, "If we move away from here, permanently, I think I can come to terms with the past. I think we can start over."

She replied, "I love you, John, but I don't want to move. And I don't think it would do any good anyway. We'll solve our problems here, or we'll separate here."

I asked her, "Are you still visiting next door?"

She nodded.

"I'd like you not to."

"I have to do this my way."

"Do what?"

She didn't reply directly, but said to me, "You visited next door. And you're not his attorney anymore. Why did you go?"

"Susan, it's not the same if I go there as when you go there. And don't piss me off by asking why it isn't."

She replied, "Well, but I will tell you that perhaps you shouldn't go there either."

"Why not? Am I complicating things?"

"Maybe. It's complex enough."

And on that note, she left for the airport.

Well, despite Susan's good advice, about a week later, on a raw, drizzly day in November, I decided to go collect the money that Bellarosa still owed me and, more important, to collect a favour. Because of the wet weather I went by way of the front gate. The three FBI men there were particularly officious, and I was briefly nostalgic for Anthony, Lenny, and Vinnie.

As I stood under the eave of the gatehouse, I could see this one FBI guy inside glancing at me through the window as he spoke to someone on the phone. Two other FBI guys stood near me with their rifles. I said to them, "Is there something wrong with my passport? Is II Duce not receiving? What's the problem here?" One of the agents shrugged. After a while, the other guy came out of the gatehouse and informed me that Mr Bellarosa was not available. I said, "My wife comes and goes here as she pleases. Now you get back on that fucking telephone and get me cleared pronto."

And he did. Though he seemed upset with me for some reason. So I was escorted up the cobble drive by one of the guys with the rifles, was turned over to another guy with a tie at the door, and got myself processed for dangerous metal objects. What they didn't understand was that if I wanted to kill Bellarosa, I would do it with my bare hands. I noticed that the flowers were all gone now and the palm court looked somehow bigger and emptier. Then I realized that all the bird cages were gone. I asked one of the FBI men about that, and he replied, "There's no one to take care of them. And they were getting on some of the guys' nerves." He smiled and added, "We only have one songbird left. He's upstairs." So I was escorted up the stairs, but this time to Bellarosa's bedroom.

It was about five P.M., but he was in bed, sitting up though not looking well. I had never been in the master bedroom of Alhambra, but I could see now that the room I was in was part of a large suite that included a sitting room off to my left and a dressing room to my front that probably included a master bath. The bedroom itself was not overly large, and the heavy, dark Mediterranean furniture and red velvets made it look smaller and somewhat depressing. There was only a single window against which the rain splattered. If I were sick, I'd rather be lying in the palm court.

Bellarosa motioned me to a chair beside the bed, the nurse's chair I suppose, but I said, "I'll stand."

"So, what can I do for you, Counsellor?"

"I'm here to collect."

"Yeah? You need that favour? Tell me what you need." "First things first. I'm also here to collect my bill. I sent you a note and an invoice over two weeks ago."

"Oh, yeah." He took a glass of red wine from the night table and sipped on it.

"Yeah… well, I'm not a free man anymore."

"Meaning what?"

"I sold myself like a whore. I do what they say now."

"Did they tell you not to pay my bill?"

"Yeah. They tell me what bills to pay. Yours ain't one of them, Counsellor.