"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.

Twenty-six.

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 was her father. Maybe. 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 was right. But I knew that he was one of the people at the club who were making anonymous demands for my expulsion. 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 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?"

"My mother used to take money from my piggy bank and never replaced it. It's sort of complicated, Doc. Next week, okay?"

So, I had that date out east and I needed the bucks for the Feds, but the other Feds across the street here wanted to bust my client and I had to stay on top of that, too. It was hard to believe that it was as recently as March when I'd had a safe, predictable life, punctuated only now and then by a friend's divorce or a revealed marital infidelity and occasionally a death. My biggest problem had been boredom.

I had called Lester Remsen the day after the battle of McGlade's and said to him, "Sell twenty thousand dollars' worth of some crap or another and drop the check with my secretary in Locust Valley."

He replied, "This is not the time to sell anything that you're holding. Your stuff got hit harder than most. Hold on to your positions if you can."

"Lester, I read the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal, too. Do as I say, please."

"Actually, I was going to phone you. You have margin calls-"

"How much?"

"About five. Do you want me to give you an exact figure so you can send me a check? Or, if money is a little tight, John, I can just liquidate more stocks to cover the margin calls."

"Sell whatever you have to."

"All right. Your portfolio is a little shaky."

This is Wall Street talk for, "You've made some very stupid investments.'' Lester and I go back a long way, and even when we're not speaking, we talk. At least we talk about stocks. I realized I didn't like stocks or Lester. "Sell everything. Now."

"Everything? Why? The market is weak. It will rally in September-"

"We've been talking stocks for twenty years. Aren't you tired of it?"

"No."

"I am. You know, Lester, if I had spent the last twenty years looking for Captain Kidd's treasure, I would have lost less money."

"That's nonsense."

"Close my account,'' I said, and hung up.

Well, anyway, it was six A A.M. on the first Tuesday in August, and I was brooding about this and that. In reality, even if Dr. Carleton wasn't in my summer house, I wouldn't be there this August, owing to the fact that my client next door wanted me to stick close. I suppose I could have moved into Alhambra, to be very close, but I don't think the don wanted me around while he conducted business and consorted with known criminals. And I certainly didn't want to be a witness to any of that.

So on that overcast Tuesday morning, I walked out of Susan's house and began my cross-country trek in a good suit, carrying a big briefcase into which I would place five million dollars in cash and assignable assets with which to make bail.

I had examined all these assets one night at Bellarosa's house in order to list and verify them. Thus, I saw a small piece of the don's empire. Most of what I saw was recorded property deeds, which the court would accept. There were some bearer bonds and a few other odds and ends, together totaling about four million, which would meet even the most excessive bail. But to be certain, Bellarosa had dumped a shopping bag onto his kitchen table that contained a million dollars in cash.

As I was making my third trip to Alhambra in as many weeks, the birds were singing and the air was still cool. A ground mist sat about chest high on the fields between our property, and it was sort of eerie, as if I were going to Wasp heaven in my Brooks Brothers suit and briefcase.

I reached the reflecting pool with the statue of Mary and Neptune still glaring at each other, and a figure moved toward me out of the mist. It was Anthony, who was being taken for a walk by a pit bull. He barked at me. The dog, I mean. Anthony said, "Guh mornin', Mistah Sutta."

He must have a sinus condition. "Good morning, Anthony. How is the don this morning?"

"He's 'spectin' ya. I'll walk ya."

"I'll walk myself, thank you.'' I proceeded up the path to the house. Anthony was quite nice when you got to know him.

I approached the rear of the big house, noticing that the security lights were still on. I crossed the big patio and pulled the bell chain. I saw Vinnie through the glass doors politely holstering his gun as he recognized me. "Come on in, Counselor. The boss is in the kitchen."

I entered the house at the rear of the palm court, and as I made my way across the large space, I noticed Lenny, the driver, sitting in a wicker chair near one of the pillars, drinking coffee. He, like Vinnie, was wearing a good suit in expectation of visitors and for the possible trip into Manhattan. Lenny stood as I approached and mumbled a greeting, which I made him repeat more distinctly. This was fun.

I made my way alone through the dark house, through the dining room, morning room, butler's pantry, and finally into the cavernous kitchen, which smelled of fresh coffee.

The kitchen had been completely redone, of course, and the don had told me exactly how much it cost to import the half mile or so of Italian cabinetry, the half acre of Italian floor tile, and the marble countertops. The appliances, sensibly, were American.

The don was sitting at the head of an oblong kitchen table, reading a newspaper. He was dressed in a blue silk pinstripe suit, a light blue shirt, which is better than white for television, and a burgundy tie with matching pocket handkerchief. The newspapers had dubbed him the Dandy Don and I could see why.

Bellarosa glanced up at me. "Sit, sit.'' He motioned to a chair and I sat to his right near the head of the table. He poured me coffee while still reading his paper.

I sipped on the black coffee. I suspected that one would never find a round table in the house of a traditional Italian, because a round table is where equals sat. An oblong table has a head where the patriarch sat. So, there I was, sitting at his right hand, and I wondered if that was significant or if I was getting into this thing too much.

He glanced up from the newspaper. "So, Counselor, is this the morning?"

"I hope so. I don't like getting up this early."

He laughed. "Yeah? You You don't like it. You're not the one going to jail." don't like it. You're not the one going to jail."

I'm not the one who's broken the law for thirty years.

He put down the newspaper. "I say this is it. The grand jury sat for three weeks. That's long enough for murder. The RICO shit can take a year, nosing around your business, trying to find what you own and where it came from. Money is complicated. Murder is simple."

"That's true."

"Hey, fifty bucks says that this is the morning."

"You're on."

"Yeah, I know what you're thinking. You think they're not going to indict me. You think you squared it with Mancuso."

"I never said that. I said I told him what you asked me to tell him-about Ferragamo. I know Mancuso is the type of man who would pass that on to Ferragamo and maybe even to his own superiors. I don't know what will come of that."

"I'll tell you what's going to come of it. Nothing. Because that scumbag Ferragamo is not going to back off after making his pitch to a grand jury. That would make him look like a real gavone. gavone. But I'm glad you talked to Mancuso. Now Ferragamo knows that Bellarosa knows.'' Bellarosa went on, "But maybe you shouldn't've told him you were my attorney." But I'm glad you talked to Mancuso. Now Ferragamo knows that Bellarosa knows.'' Bellarosa went on, "But maybe you shouldn't've told him you were my attorney."

"How could I speak to him on your behalf without telling him I was representing you?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. But maybe if you didn't say anything, he might've opened up to you."

"That's unethical and illegal, Frank. Do you want a crooked lawyer or a Boy Scout?"

He smiled. "Okay. We'll play you straight."

"I'll play myself straight."

"Whatever."

We drank coffee awhile and the don shared his newspaper with me. It was the Daily News Daily News, that morning's city edition, which someone must have delivered to him hot off the printing press in Brooklyn. I flipped through the lead stories, but there was no early warning, no statement from Ferragamo about an imminent arrest. "Nothing about you in here,'' I said.

"Yeah. The scumbag's not that stupid. I got people in the newspapers and he knows it. He's got to wait for the bulldog edition, about midnight. We'll get that tonight. This prick loves the newspapers, but he loves TV more. You want something to eat?"

"No, thanks."

"You sure? I'll call Filomena. Come on. Get something to eat. It's gonna be a long morning. Eat."

"I am really not hungry. Really.'' You know how these people are about eating, and they actually get annoyed when you refuse food, and they're happy when you eat. Why it matters to them is beyond me.

Bellarosa motioned to a thick folder on the table. "That's the stuff."

"Right.'' I put the folder containing the deeds and such in my briefcase.

Bellarosa produced a large shopping bag from under the table. In the bag was one hundred stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills, a hundred bills in each stack, for a total of one million dollars. It looked good like that.

He said to me, "Don't get tempted on the way to court, Counselor."

"Money doesn't tempt me."

"Yeah? That's what you say. Watch, I'll get to court and find out you cold-cocked Lenny and stole the money. And I'll be in jail and I get this postcard from you in Rio, and it says, 'Fuck you, Frank.'" He laughed.

"You can trust me. I'm a lawyer."

That made him laugh even harder for some reason. Anyway, I have this large briefcase, almost a suitcase, that lawyers use when they have to drag forty pounds of paper into court, plus lunch. So I transferred the paper money into the briefcase along with the four million in paper assets. Paper, paper, paper.

Bellarosa said, "You looked at those deeds and everything the other day, right?"

"Yes."

"So you see, I'm a legitimate businessman."

"Please, Frank. It's a little early in the morning for bullshit."

"Yeah?'' He laughed. "Yeah, you see, I got Stanhope Hall in that briefcase now. I got a motel in Florida, I got one in Vegas, and I got land in Atlantic City. Land. That's the only thing that counts in this world. They don't make no more land, Counselor."

"No, they don't, except in Holland where-"

"There was a time when they couldn't take land away from you unless they fought you for it. Now, they just do some paperwork."

"That's true."

"They're gonna take my fucking land."

"No, it's just going to be used as collateral. You'll get it back."

"No, Counselor, when they see that shit in your briefcase, they're gonna come after it. Ferragamo is going to start a RICO thing next. They're gonna freeze everything I got, and one day they're gonna own it all. And that stuff you got in there makes their job easier. The murder bullshit smoked out a lot of my assets."

"You're probably right."

"But fuck them. Fuck all governments. All they want is to grab your property. Fuck them. There's more where that came from."

I guess so, if Mancuso was correct. A lot more.

"Hey, did I tell you I made an offer for Fox Point? Nine mill. I talked to that lawyer who you told me handles things here for the people who own the place.'' He asked me, "You want to handle that for me?"

I shrugged. "Why not?"

"Good. I'll give you a point. That's ninety large."

"Let's see if they accept nine. Don't forget the Iranians."

"Fuck them. They're not owners. They're buyers. I only deal with owners. I showed this lawyer that my best offer was his client's best offer. So he's going to make his clients understand that. His clients are not going to know about any more Iranian offers. Capisce? Capisce?"