"My attorneys want to know -"

"Your father."

"Well… I don't really care about the money. But it's not a good habit to get into. I mean, mingling assets."

"We mingle my assets. Look, Susan, rest assured I have no claim on your property, even if we do occasionally mingle assets. You have a very tight marriage contract. I'm a lawyer. Trust me."

"I do, John, but… I don't actually need to have the money, but I do need a sort of promissory note. That's what my… lawyers said."

"All right." I scribbled an IOU for $20,000 on the place mat, signed and dated it, and pushed it across the table. "It's legal. Just ignore the part about lunch, and dinner, and cocktails, steaks and chops."

"You needn't be so touchy. You're a lawyer. You understand -" "I understand that I've given your father free legal services for nearly two decades. I understand that I paid half the cost for the moving of your stable -" "Your horse is in there, too."

"I don't want the stupid horse. I'm going to have him turned into glue." "That's an awful thing to say. And by the way, you bought the boat in your name only."

"The cheque had my name on it, lady."

"All right, then… I don't like to bring this up, but you've never had to make a mortgage or rent payment since we've been married."

"And what did you do to get that house except to get born with a silver spoon up your ass?"

"Please don't be so crude, John. Look, I don't like to talk about money. Let's drop it. Please?"

"No, no, no. Let us not drop it. Let us have our very first and very overdue fight about money."

"Please lower your voice."

I may or may not have lowered my voice, but the jukebox came on, and so everyone who was listening to us had to listen to Frank Sinatra singing 'My Way'. Great song. I think the guy at the end of the bar played it for me. I gave him a thumbs-up.

Susan said, "This is very ugly. I'm not used to this."

I addressed Lady Stanhope. "I'm sorry I lost my temper. You're quite right, of course. Please put that IOU in your bag and I will repay the loan as soon as I can. I'll need a few days."

She seemed embarrassed now. "Forget it. Really." She ripped up the IOU. "I don't understand any of this."

"Then, in the future, keep my business and our business to yourself, and do not discuss any of it with your father. I strongly suggest you get a personal attorney who has nothing to do with your father or your trustees. I will deal with that attorney in any future matters." Including matrimonial. "And please keep in mind that, for better or worse, I am your husband." She was really quite red now, and I could see she was vacillating between my feet and my throat. She finally said, "All right, John." She picked up the menu and I couldn't see her face.

I told you about the red hair, and I knew she was still wavering between her good breeding and her bad genes. I suppose, as a purely precautionary move, I should have put the steak knives out of her reach, but that might be overreacting. I was still pretty hot myself, of course, and I had to get one last zinger in. I said, "I didn't appreciate your father calling you the other night to see if you were all right. Does he think I beat you?" She glanced up from the menu. "Of course not. That was silly of him." She added, "He's really quite angry with you."

"Why? Because I stuck him with the dinner bill?"

"John… what you said was a bit strong. But… he asked me to tell you that he would accept an apology from you."

I clapped my hands. "What a magnificent man! What a beautiful human being!" I wiped a tear from my eye.

The song had ended, and we had our audience back.

Susan leaned across the table and said to me, "You've changed. Do you know that?"

"And how about you, Susan?"

She shrugged and went back to the menu, then looked up again. "John, if you apologized, it would make things so much less tense. For all of us. Even if you don't mean it. Do it for me. Please."

There was a time, of course, not so long ago, when I would have. But that time had passed, and it was not likely to come again. I replied, "I will not say something I don't mean. I will not crawl for you, or for anyone. My only regret in that episode is that I should have grabbed his tie and yanked his face into his cheesecake."

"You're really angry, aren't you?"

"No, anger is transient. I hate the bastard."

"John! He's my father."

"Don't bet on that."

So, I had dinner alone. But I figured I should get used to it. Someday my quick wit is going to get me into trouble. Actually, I guess it did.

CHAPTER 26

This elderly couple walked into my office and announced that they had not gotten along for about fifty years and they wanted a divorce. They looked as if they were around ninety – stop me if you've heard this – so I said to them, "Excuse me for asking, but why have you waited so long to seek a divorce?" And the old gentleman replied, "We were waiting for the children to die." Well, there are times when I feel the same way. Susan and I were reconciled yet again, and I had apologized for suggesting that her paternal origin was in question and that her mother was a whore. And even if Charlotte had once had hot pants, what difference did it make? But there was still the open question of whether or not her father was a monumental prick and so forth. I honestly believe he is, plus some. In fact, I even jotted down a few more descriptions of him in the event I ever saw him again. Susan, of course, knew what he was, which was why she wasn't terribly upset with me; but William was her father. Maybe. Anyway, I was still living rent-free in Susan's house, and we were speaking again but not in complete or compound sentences.

I had been getting to bed early on Monday evenings, as per Mr Bellarosa's suggestion, rising early on Tuesdays and joining him for coffee at dawn. Susan hadn't questioned me about my two early-Tuesday departures on foot to Alhambra, and as per my client's instructions, I hadn't told her about his imminent arrest.

The FBI knew now, of course, that I was Frank Bellarosa's attorney, but my client did not want them to know that we had anticipated an early-Tuesday-morning visit. So, for that reason, I had to walk across our back acreage and approach Alhambra from the rear so as not to be seen from the DePauw outpost.

Incidentally, I had run into Allen DePauw a few times in the village, and with that profound lack of moral courage that is peculiar to rat finks, stool pigeons, and police snitches the world over, he did not snub me, but greeted me as though we were still buddies. On the last occasion that I ran into him, at the hardware store, I inquired, "Do you trust your wife alone with all those men at your house around the clock? Don't you go to Chicago a lot for business?" Instead of taking a swing at me, he replied coolly, "They have a mobile home behind my house."

"Come on, Allen, I'll bet they're always coming inside to borrow milk while you're away."

"That's not very funny, John. I'm doing what I think is right." He paid for his machine gun oil or whatever it was and left.

Well, probably he was doing what he thought was right. Maybe it was right. But I knew that he was one of the people at the club who were making anonymous demands for my expulsion.

Anyway, in regard to Tuesday early A.M., even if the FBI came for Frank Bellarosa on another day, I was ready every morning to jump out of bed and be at Alhambra quickly. This was really exciting.

It was early August now, a time when I should have been in East Hampton. But Dr Carleton, whoever the hell he was, was in my house with his feet on my furniture, enjoying East End summer fun and the instant respectability of an eighteenth-century shingled house. I'd spoken to the psychiatric gentleman on the phone once to get him squared away with the house, and he'd said to me, "What is your rush in going to closing, if I may ask?"