"Yeah.'' He said, "That bitch of a nurse won't let me drink. Because of the antibiotics I'm taking. Shit, the fucking sambuca is an antibiotic. Right? Here, put this back."

I put the bottle back behind the books. My, how things had changed at Alhambra. Now I I was depressed. I looked at my watch as if I had to leave. He saw me and said, "Sit down a minute. I gotta tell you something.'' He motioned me by his side and said, "Sit here on this hassock.'' He jerked his thumb at the ceiling, which I took to mean the place might be bugged. was depressed. I looked at my watch as if I had to leave. He saw me and said, "Sit down a minute. I gotta tell you something.'' He motioned me by his side and said, "Sit here on this hassock.'' He jerked his thumb at the ceiling, which I took to mean the place might be bugged.

I sat on the hassock close to him.

He leaned toward me and spoke softly, "Let me give you some advice, Counselor. I don't hear much from the outside these days, but I do hear that Ferragamo is after your ass. And he ain't doing that just to blow my alibi, he's doing it because you pissed him off in court, and because you saved my life and fucked up his whole thing. So now he's got vendetta on his brain. So watch yourself."

"I know.'' Irony of ironies; Frank Bellarosa was being offered a deal, and I was looking at ten years for perjury. And the one man who could testify against me was Frank Bellarosa. Bellarosa understood this, of course, and I'm sure the irony wasn't lost on him. In fact, he smiled and said, "Hey, Counselor, I won't rat you out. Even if they get me by the balls and I got to give up some people, I won't rat you out to Ferragamo."

I mean, this guy first got you into serious trouble, then got you out of it, then told you that you owed him a favor for his help, then you did him a favor that got you into more trouble, and round and round it went. Now I think he wanted me to say thank you. Speaking in the same low volume as he was, I said, "Frank, please don't do me any more favors. I can't survive many more of your favors."

He laughed, but his ribs must have been busted up pretty bad because he winced, and his face went even whiter. He swallowed the last of the sambuca, stayed motionless awhile until his breathing steadied, then sat up a bit and asked me, "How's your wife?"

"Which one?"

He smiled. "Susan. Your wife."

"Why are you asking me? She comes here."

"Yeah ... but I haven't seen her in a while."

"Neither have I. She just got home yesterday."

"Yeah. She went to see the kids at school. Right?"

"That's right.'' She had also taken another trip to Hilton Head before that, which included a journey to Key West to see her brother, Peter, who is apparently phototropic.

Susan and I never really did have a long talk, but we had a few sentences, and I suggested that she not come here anymore. She seemed to agree, but had probably come anyway; as recently as yesterday, in fact, if those flowers were from her. It must have slipped Frank's memory.

Of course, I should have moved out, but moving out is hard to do. For one thing, I knew I was partly responsible for everything that had happened to us since April. Also, Susan was gone more than she was home, so moving out wasn't a pressing issue. And Susan and I can go weeks and weeks without speaking, and my finances, to be honest, were shaky, and bottom line, I still loved her and she loved me and she had asked me to stay.

So there I was, a lonely house husband, living in my wife's residence, nearly broke, still on the hook as a witness for a Mafia don, the possible target of a rubout, a social pariah, a captain without a boat, and an embarrassment to my law firm. The firm, incidentally, had sent me a registered letter at the Locust Valley office, which I decided to open. The letter asked me to disassociate myself from Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds, forthwith. The letter was signed by all the senior partners, active and retired, even the ones who couldn't remember their own names, let alone mine. One of the signatures was that of Joseph P. Sutter. Pop's a great kidder.

Well, screw Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds. They all needed a few whacks with a lead pipe. Meantime, they could offer me some incentives to leave.

Bellarosa said, "I'm glad she's not pissed at me."

I looked at him. "Who?"

"Your wife."

"Why should she be?"

He replied, "For almost getting her husband killed."

"Don't be silly, Frank. Why, just the other day she was saying to me, 'John, I can't wait for Frank to get better so we can all go to Giulio's again.'"

He tried to keep from laughing, but he couldn't and his ribs hurt again. "Hey ... cut it out ... you're killing me ..."

I stood. "Okay, Frank, here's something that's not so funny. You know fucking well that Susan and I are barely speaking and you know fucking well why. If she wants to come here, that's her business, but I don't want you talking to me about her as if you're making polite small talk. Okay?"

Bellarosa stared off into space, which I had learned was his way of showing that he wanted the subject changed. I said to him, "I have to go.'' I moved toward the door. "Should I tell your nurse you need to use the potty?"

He ignored the taunt and said to me, "Hey, did I ever thank you for saving my life?"

"Not that I recall."

"Yeah. You know why? Because 'thank you' don't mean shit in my business. 'Thank you' is what you say to women and outsiders. What I say to you, Counselor, is I owe you one."

"Jesus Christ, Frank, I hope you don't mean a favor."

"Yeah. A favor. You don't understand favors. Favors are like money in the bank with Italians. We collect favors, trade favors, count them like assets, hold them and collect on them. I owe you a big favor. For my life."

"Keep it."

"No. You gotta ask a favor."

I looked at him. This was like having an Italian genie. But you can't trust genies. I said, "If you went to trial for murder, and I asked you not to have Jack Weinstein call me as your witness, would you do that even if it meant your getting convicted for a murder you didn't commit?"

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 favor."

"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 neighborhood.'" As I closed the door behind me, I heard him laughing and coughing.

Thirty-six.

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 parceled 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 favor. 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 Il 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 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, Counselor?"

"I'm here to collect."

"Yeah? You need that favor? 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, Counselor. That's your pal Ferragamo. But I'll talk to somebody higher up for you. Okay?"

"Don't bother. I'll write this one off to experience."

"You let me know.'' He asked, "You want some wine?"

"No.'' I walked around the room and noticed a book on his night table. It was not Machiavelli, but a picture book of Naples.

Bellarosa said to me, "What really hurts me is that I can't take care of my people anymore. For an Italian, that's like cutting off his balls. Capisce? Capisce?"

"No, and I never want to capisce capisce a damned thing again." a damned thing again."

Bellarosa shrugged.

I said, "So you work for Alphonse Ferragamo now."

He didn't like that at all, but he said nothing.

I asked him, "Can you tell me what those bulldozers are doing at Stanhope Hall?"

"Yeah. They're gonna dig foundations. Put in roads. The IRS made me sell the place to the developers."

"Is that a fact? My whole world is fucked up, and now you tell me I'm about to be surrounded by tractor sheds."

"Whaddaya mean tractor sheds? Nice houses. You'll have plenty of good neighbors."

It wasn't my property that was being subdivided or surrounded anyway, so I didn't really care. But I asked him, "What's happening to the Stanhope mansion?"

"I don't know. The developer has some Japs interested in it for a kind of rest house in the country. You know? Those people get all nervous, and they need a place to rest."

This was really depressing news. A rest house for burned-out Japanese businessmen, surrounded by thirty or forty new houses on what was once a beautiful estate. I asked him, "How did you get the zoning changed?"

"I got friends in high places now. Like the IRS. I told you, they want big bucks, so I got to get rid of everything with their help. And Ferragamo started a RICO thing against me so he's trying to get his before the fucking IRS gets theirs. They're like fucking wolves tearing me apart."

"So you're telling me you're broke?"