He said to me, “If you took this on, I’d give you two hundred up front, and a third of what you got back from the Feds.” He added, in case I didn’t get the math, “That could be three, four, maybe five million for you.”

He wasn’t actually as dim as I thought, and he also figured out that I probably needed the dough, which would make most men vulnerable to the temptations of the devil. I replied, “Actually, it’s about zero.”

“No, you at least get two hundred up front and it’s yours.”

“No, it’s yours.”

He seemed a little exasperated and tried a new approach. “Hey, Counselor, I think you owe me and my family something on this.”

“Anthony, I don’t owe you a thing.” In fact, Junior, your father owes me fifty large. I continued, “At the end, I wasn’t working for your father when he cut his own deal with the government. The only representation he had, as far as I know, was his personal attorney, Jack Weinstein” – who was actually a mob attorney – “so you should speak to him if you haven’t already.”

“Jack is retired.”

“So am I.”

As far as I was concerned, this meeting was over. We’d covered the walk down memory lane, and I’d squashed the clumsy recruiting pitch, so unless Junior wanted to hear that his father had actually been a government stool pigeon, or wanted to hear about my feelings on the subject of his father pulling some strings to get my tax returns examined, or seducing my wife, then there was little else to talk about – unless he wanted to talk about the night his father was murdered. On that subject, I reminded him, “Don’t forget what we discussed regarding my ex-wife.”

He nodded, then asked me, “I mean, do you give a shit?”

“My children do.”

He nodded again, and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Good.” I was about to reannounce my early departure, but then he said, “I never understood how she got off on that.”

“She had good lawyers.”

“Yeah? I guess that wasn’t you.”

“Anthony, go fuck yourself.”

Like his father, who rarely, if ever, heard a personal insult, he didn’t know how to react to that. He seemed to be wavering between explosive rage or sloughing it off as a joke. He picked the latter, and forced a laugh, saying, “You got to learn to curse in Italian. You say, vaffanculo. That means, like, Go fuck your ass. In English, we say, Go fuck yourself. Same thing.”

“Interesting. Well-”

“But, I mean, do you think it’s fair that she walked on a premeditated murder? She got a different kind of justice because of who she is. Right? I mean, what is this? Open season on Italians?”

“This subject is closed. Or take it up with the Justice Department.”

“Yeah, right.”

“And don’t even think about what you’re thinking about.”

He stared at me, but said nothing.

I started to slide out of the booth, but the waitress appeared with two covered serving dishes, and the sweet but obviously inexperienced young lady asked us, “You want to share?”

Anthony, whose mood had darkened somewhat, reminded her, “We got the same fucking thing.” He looked at me and asked, “You believe this moron?” He turned to her and inquired, “You jerking us around? We look stupid to you?”

The waitress seemed not to understand and asked, “You no like soup?”

Anthony snapped at her, “Get the soup out of here and bring a couple of beers. Chop, chop.”

She took the soup and left.

Frank Bellarosa had hid his thugishness well, though I’d seen it a few times, and heard about it from FBI agent Mancuso. His son, however, apparently hadn’t learned that a good sociopath understood how and when to be polite and charming. Anthony had been okay in the gatehouse – in fact, I’d thought he was a bit of a lightweight – but if you watch how powerful men treat the little people, you know how they will treat you when you don’t have anything they want.

Anthony said, “She forgot the fucking chopsticks. Didn’t you ask for chopsticks?” He raised his hand and was about to shout across the room, but I said, “Forget it.”

“No. I’ll get-”

“I said, forget it.” I leaned toward him, and he looked at me. I said to him, “When she returns, you will apologize to her for your bad behavior.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Anthony. And here’s another etiquette tip for you – if I want chopsticks, I’ll ask for them – not you. And if I want a beer, I’ll order the beer. Understand?”

He understood, but he wasn’t happy with the lesson. Interestingly, he said nothing.

I slid out of the booth.

He asked, “Where you going?”

“Home.”

He got up, followed me, and said, “Hey, Counselor, don’t run off. We’re not done yet.”

I turned toward him, and we were almost face-to-face. I said to him, “We have nothing more to talk about on any subject.”

“You know that’s not true. We both got some things to work out.”

“Maybe. But not together, Anthony.”

We were attracting a little attention, so he said, “I’ll walk you out.”

“No. You’ll go back to your seat, apologize to the waitress, then do whatever the hell you want with the rest of your life.”

A sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he said, “Yeah, I see the balls, but I don’t see the brains, Counselor.”

I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Anthony’s goon had stood and moved a few feet toward us. The restaurant was very quiet now, and I said to Frank Bellarosa’s son, “You have your father’s eyes, but not much else.”

I turned and walked toward the door, not knowing what to expect.

I went out into the cool night air. Tony was on a smoke break, leaning against the Cadillac SUV, and called out to me, “Hey, you done already?”

I ignored him, got into my car, and started the engine. I saw the goon coming out of the restaurant, and as I backed out of the parking space, I saw him speaking to Tony, and both men looked at me as I drove, without haste, into the street.

I didn’t need to provoke a confrontation, but he was starting to annoy me, and I thought he was being a little condescending. Well, maybe I was reading him wrong. Or maybe I was seeing Frank across the table, and maybe I had a flashback or a mental image of Frank Bellarosa having sex with Susan – that damned dream – or Frank scamming me into working for him, or Frank screwing up my life with a smile on his face.

In any case, whatever it was that set me off, it felt good, and it had the added result of getting Junior out of my life.

I glanced in my rearview mirror, but didn’t see the Cadillac SUV. I left Glen Cove and headed back toward Lattingtown along a dark country road.

Also, I’d put Anthony on notice again about staying away from Susan. Of course, if I was working for him, then Susan had nothing to worry about, assuming she was worried, which I was sure she was not. Worrying used to be my job, and apparently still is.

The other thing for me to keep in mind was that Anthony, who hadn’t inherited his father’s wealth, had most probably inherited his father’s enemies; those within his immediate circle of friends and family, such as Uncle Sal, and those outside his family, such as some of the goombahs I’d met at a gathering at the Plaza Hotel one night, and finally, those, such as Alphonse Ferragamo, whose job it was to put young Anthony in prison for a long time. Therefore, Anthony’s tenure as don might be short, and being around him might be dangerous.

And somehow, Anthony thought I might be able to help him with these problems, as I’d helped his father. Was I supposed to be flattered?

History can definitely repeat itself if everyone concentrates very hard on making the same stupid mistakes.

And yet, something draws us back to the familiar, because even if the familiar is not so good, it is familiar.

Within fifteen minutes, I was on Grace Lane – Anthony Bellarosa’s gift to his neighbors – and my headlights illuminated the shiny new blacktop stretching out before me. A verse from Matthew popped into my head: Wide is the gate, and broad is the road, that leadeth to destruction.