“I get your point. But there’s no turning back to a simpler time. Or a safer time.”

“Right… but, standing here, I think… I don’t know. Maybe… like, we lost something.”

He didn’t finish whatever thoughts had been forming in his mind, and quite frankly, I was surprised that he even had thoughts like this. I recalled, though, that his father also harbored some half-expressed worldviews that made him unhappy. And, I suppose, after 9/11, Anthony, like a lot of people, had come to the understanding that there was more to his self-absorbed life than a difficult wife, a complex family history, a clinging mother, and a stressful occupation. Quite possibly, he was thinking, too, about his own mortality.

Anthony lit a cigarette and continued to look at the building across the road. Finally, he said, “When I was a kid at La Salle, one of the brothers said to us, ‘Anyone in this room can be President of the United States.’” Anthony took a drag on his cigarette and concluded, “He was full of shit.”

Funny, they told us the same thing in my prep school, but at St. Paul’s, it was a possibility. I said to him, “We shape our own destiny, Anthony. We have dreams and ambitions, and we make choices. I, for instance, have chosen to go home.”

He actually thought that was funny, but he didn’t think that was one of my choices. He said, “Here’s my other point – my thought-” The traffic light changed and he took my arm and we crossed the busy street. I would have given anything just then to run into the Reverend James Hunnings. “Father, may I introduce my friend and business partner, don Anthony Bellarosa? You remember his father, Frank. Oh, and here’s my mother. Harriet, this is Frank Bellarosa’s little boy, Tony, all grown up and now called Anthony. And, oh my goodness, there’s Susan. Susan, come here and meet the son of the man you whacked. Doesn’t he look like his father?”

All right, enough of that. We reached the opposite sidewalk without meeting anyone I knew, or having to stop so don Bellarosa could sign autographs.

Anthony said to me, “My father once said, ‘There’s only two kinds of men in this world. Men who work for other people, and men who work for themselves.’”

I didn’t reply, because I knew where this was going.

He continued, “So, like, I work for myself. You work for other people.”

Again, I didn’t reply.

He continued, “So, what I’m thinking is that I front you the money you need to open an office here and hang out your shingle. What do you think about that?”

“It’s a long commute from London.”

“Hey, fuck London. You belong here. You could be in Teddy Roosevelt’s old office, and do your tax law stuff here. Hire a few secretaries, and before you know it, you’re raking in big bucks.”

“And I wonder who my first client will be.”

“Wrong. See? You’re wrong on that. You and me have no connection.”

“Except the money you loan me.”

“I’m not loaning you the money. I’m fronting it. I’m investing in you. And if it doesn’t work out for you, then I lose my investment, and I just kick your ass out of the office. You have no downside.”

“I don’t get my legs broken or anything like that?”

“Whaddaya talking about?”

“And what have I done to deserve this opportunity?”

“You know. For all that you did for my father. For saving his life. For being the one guy who never wanted anything from him, and for not wanting any harm to come to him.”

Actually, I did want something from him – a little excitement in my life, and I got that. As for the other thing, after I realized he was having an affair with my wife, I wished him great harm, and I got that, too. But I wasn’t about to tell Anthony that Pop and I were even on that score. Instead, I said to him with impatience in my voice, “Tell me exactly what the hell you want from me. And no bullshit about you investing in my future with no strings attached.”

We were attracting a little attention, and Anthony glanced around and said in a quiet voice, “Come upstairs and we can talk about that.” He added, “The apartment is empty. The realtor is coming in half an hour. I got the key.”

“Tell me here and now.”

He ignored me, turned toward the door, and unlocked it, revealing a small foyer and a long, steep staircase. He said, “I’ll be upstairs.”

“I won’t.”

He stepped into the foyer, looked back at me, and said, “You want to hear what I have to say.”

He turned and climbed the stairs.

I turned and walked away.

As I moved along Main Street, thinking about a taxi or running the five or six miles home, another thought, which I’d been avoiding, intruded into my head.

If I really thought about this, and let my mind come to an inevitable conclusion, then I knew that Anthony Bellarosa, despite what he’d told me, was not going to allow Susan, his father’s murderer, to live down the street. Or live at all. He just couldn’t do that. And there were undoubtedly people waiting for him to take care of it. And if he didn’t take care of it, then his paesanos – including probably his brothers – would wonder what kind of don this was.

And yet Anthony wanted me to work for him, and the unspoken understanding was that if I did this, then Susan was safe. For the time being.

So… I needed to at least go along with this, until I could speak to Susan. It really is all about keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer.

I turned and walked back to the building.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The door was still ajar, and I climbed the stairs.

There was a landing at the top, and I opened the only door, which revealed the living room of an empty apartment. The carpet was worn, the beige paint was dingy, and the high plaster ceiling looked like it was ready to fall. An altogether depressing place, except that it had big windows and it was very sunny.

Another good feature was that the Mafia don seemed to have left. Then I heard a toilet flush, and a door at the far end of the room opened, and Anthony said, as if I’d been there the whole time, “The plumbing seems okay.” He looked around and announced, “All this shit needs to be ripped out. But I own a construction company – hey, you remember Dominic? He did the horse stable at your place.” He further informed me, “Sometime back in the thirties, they turned these offices into apartments. So, I get rid of the tenants, and I can get double the rent as office space. Right?”

I didn’t reply.

“I see big, fancy moldings, thick carpets, and mahogany doors. And you know what I see on that door? I see gold letters that say, ‘John Whitman Sutter, Attorney-at-Law.’ Can you see that?”

“Maybe.”

He didn’t seem to react to this hint of capitulation, figuring, correctly, that if I’d climbed the stairs, then I was ready to listen.

He said, “Let’s look at the other rooms.” He walked through a door, and I followed into a large corner bedroom from which I could see the streets below. The walls were painted white over peeling wallpaper, and the carpet looked like Astroturf. Anthony said to me, “The realtor said this was Roosevelt’s office.”

Actually, the realtor was mistaken, or more likely, lying. Roosevelt, as I said, kept his office at Sagamore Hill, and this was probably his secretary’s office. Anthony was being sold a bill of goods by a sharp realtor, who wanted to increase the value of the property. More interestingly, Anthony was totally buying it, the way people do who are more enthused than smart. If Frank was here, he’d smack his son on the head and say, “I got a bridge in Brooklyn I’ll sell you.”

Anthony went on, “Roosevelt could look out these windows and check out the broads.” He laughed, then speculated, “Hey, do you think he had a comare?”

I recalled that Frank used this word, and when I asked Susan, who spoke passable college Italian, what it meant, she said, “Godmother,” but that didn’t seem like the context in which Frank was using it. So I asked Jack Weinstein, Frank’s Jewish consigliere and my Mafia interpreter, and Jack said, with a smile, “It means, literally, ‘godmother,’ but it’s the married boys’ slang for their girlfriend or mistress. Like, ‘I’m going to see my godmother tonight.’ Funny.”