The Gate House

by Nelson DeMille

  “It’s bran.” She said to me, “Well, you tried, and I tried, but I don’t think they were comfortable with this situation.”

  “What was your first clue?”

  She thought a moment, then said, “Well, it’s their problem.”

  “It is. And don’t let them make you feel guilty. You’re a good daughter, but they’re manipulative, narcissistic, and self-centered.” Plus, they’re assholes. I added, “And they don’t care about seeing their grandchildren.”

  Susan sat at the table, and she looked sad. So I said, “We’ll have a nice Father’s Day together. I promise.”

  She forced a smile.

  I hesitated, then took her hand and said, “If me leaving . . . I mean, leaving for good, will—”

  “If you say that one more time, I’ll kick you out.”

  I stood and gave her a big hug, then said, “Your father and I have a date to discuss business, Sunday night or Monday morning.”

  She thought about that and said, “I don’t like being discussed as though I was a blushing virgin.”

  “You’re not a virgin?”

  “What are you going to talk about?”

  “Well, the deal.” I let her know, “We need a prenuptial agreement. That’s what will make the deal work.”

  “This is not a deal. It’s a marriage.”

  “Not when you’re a Stanhope. And that’s your problem, not mine.”

  “All right. Talk to him. Try not to screw up my allowance and my inheritance.”

  “Do you care?”

  “No. But take care of the children.”

  “I will.” I added, “Whatever it takes.”

  Then she said something that did not shock me. She said, “God forgive me, I hate them.”

  She was a little weepy, so I put my arms around her and said, “We’ve moved on from the past, and now you have to move on from your parents.”

  “I know.” She said, “I feel sorry for them.”

  It’s hard for me to feel sorry for anyone worth one hundred million dollars, especially if they’re assholes, but to be nice, I said, “I know what you mean . . . I feel sorry for Harriet, and I felt sorry for my father . . . and I think he died feeling sorry for himself. But . . . we are not going to become them.”

  She nodded, stood, and said, “Let’s do something fun today.”

  Well, I just pushed the Stanhopes out the door, and it doesn’t get more fun than that. I asked, “What would you like to do?”

  “Let’s go to the city and have lunch, then go to a museum, or shop.”

  “Shop?”

  “When was the last time you were in Manhattan?”

  I replied, “September of last year.”

  She looked at me, nodded, and said, “I’ve never been to Ground Zero.” She thought a moment, then asked, “Is that something we should do . . . ?”

  “It’s not exactly a fun day in the city.”

  “I know . . . but you were there . . . can we do that today?”

  “You can let me know how you feel when we’re driving in.”

  “All right . . .” She took my hand and said, “I feel safe when I’m standing next to you.”

  “That’s very nice.” I said to her, “I never felt so alone and so depressed in my life as I did when I came back to New York last September.”

  She said, “Carolyn came to Hilton Head, and she said to me, ‘Mom, I wish Dad was here.’ And I said to her, ‘Me, too.’”

  I replied, “Well, I’m here.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  As we drove toward Manhattan, Susan looked at the skyline and observed, “It’s so strange not seeing the Towers there . . .” Then she said, “Let’s go to Ground Zero.”

  I glanced at her and replied, “All right.”

  So we drove the Taurus into Lower Manhattan, and spent some quiet time on the observation platform overlooking the excavated ruins. It was hard to comprehend this tragedy, and harder to understand the senseless deaths of so many human beings, including people we knew. The gray, drizzly day added to our somber mood.

  We took a walk through the streets of Lower Manhattan. When I worked here, this was a very busy and bustling part of the city, but now the streets and sidewalks look emptier than I remembered, and I knew that had to do with September 11. Maybe I’d be working down here again, but with a new firm, of course—one that valued my brash career decisions, my sailing adventures, and my past association with organized crime. In fact, getting a good job was not going to be that easy—Anthony Bellarosa’s generous offer notwithstanding—so, since I might be the only person who would hire me at my required salary, I should work for myself. My future father-in-law would be delighted to finance my new firm, and Carolyn could work with me, and we’d be Sutter & Sutter: tax law, environmental specialists, and women’s legal rights.

  Susan asked, “What are you thinking about?”

  I told her, and she smiled and asked, “Which of those areas would you feel comfortable working in?”

  We walked up to Chambers Street and entered Ecco restaurant, where I used to bring clients. After we were seated, I looked at the lunch crowd, which was mostly Wall Street types who are easy for me to spot, though I didn’t see a single face I knew. Ecco’s clientele also included high-priced defense attorneys who had business in the nearby courts, plus a few high-ranking law enforcement people from nearby Police Plaza and Federal Plaza. I looked around for Mr. Mancuso, but I didn’t think he’d splurge on a sixty-dollar lunch, though maybe this is where we’d have our beers one night after work.

  Susan asked, “See anyone you know?”

  “No, I don’t. And it’s only been ten years.”

  She commented, “Ten years can be a long time.”

  “It can be.”

  We had a good lunch, with a good bottle of red wine to take the chill out of our bones, and we held hands and talked.

  After lunch, we took a walk to my old office building at 23 Wall Street, and as I always do with visitors, I pointed out to Susan the scars in the stone that were caused by the Anarchists’ bomb at the turn of the last century. She was sweet enough not to remind me that I’d shown this to her about twenty times.

  I was going to enter the big, ornate lobby to look around, but I noticed that there was now a security point right near the door, complete with metal detectors and tables where you needed to empty your pockets. This was a little jarring, and also depressing, so we moved on—not that I wanted to take the elevator up to Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds to hug and kiss my former partners.

  Well, I was ready to leave Memory Lane and take a subway or taxi up to Midtown for some really great shopping, but Susan said to me, “Let’s walk to Little Italy.”

  I didn’t reply.

  She said, “We need to go there as well.”

  I thought about that, then agreed, “All right.”

  So we walked in the drizzle up to Little Italy and found ourselves on Mott Street, which hadn’t changed much in ten years, nor had it changed much in the last hundred years.

  A minute later, we were in front of Giulio’s Ristorante. Not much had changed here either in the last hundred years, though I know for a fact that the plate-glass window and the red café curtains had been replaced ten years ago—right after Frank Bellarosa caught a double- barreled shotgun blast in his Kevlar vest, and sailed backwards from the sidewalk, then reentered Giulio’s through the window.

  I looked down at the sidewalk where Vinnie had fallen after he took a single shotgun blast full in the face from less than six feet away. The shooters, two of them, had been crouched on the far side of Frank’s limo, which was parked at the curb . . . then I saw both men stand and rest their arms and shotguns on the roof of the car . . . then they fired . . . two for Frank, and one for Vinnie, and the sound of the blasts was deafening.

  Then the guy who had fired only one shot and I made eye contact.

  Susan said to me, “John . . . what happened?”

  I looke
d at her. She’d been inside the restaurant, still at the table with Anna, and I realized I’d never told her exactly what had gone on out here.

  I hesitated, then related what happened to Frank and Vinnie, and continued, “So the shooter looks away from me, then looks back at Frank, who’s half in and half out of the window . . . Vinnie is definitely not a problem anymore . . . so I guess the guy decides that Frank is taken care of too, and he doesn’t have a good shot at him anyway . . . only his legs . . . so he looks back at me—like . . . he’s not sure what to do about me.”

  Susan said, in a barely audible voice, “Oh my God.” She asked me, “Why didn’t you run?”

  “Well, it happened so fast . . . ten seconds maybe. But . . . I wasn’t sure why he was hesitating . . . then I thought, I guess I’m not on his list . . . but he was looking at me, and the shotgun was still in his hands . . . and I’m thinking I’m a witness, so maybe I shouldn’t be looking at his face.”

  Susan took my arm and said, “Let’s go.”

  I remained in the spot where I’d stood ten years before, and continued, “So I decided I didn’t want to wait for the shot—so I gave him the finger, and he smiled, then swung the gun back toward Frank and fired his final shot into Frank’s legs.”

  She stayed silent a moment, then asked, “You did what?”

  “I gave him the finger. Like this—” I raised my middle finger in a passable Italian salute.

  Susan remained silent, then said to me, “That was insane.”

  “Well . . . maybe. But here I am.”

  She pulled on my arm and said again, “Let’s go.”

  “No . . . let’s go inside.”

  “No, John.”

  “Come on. We’re here, it’s raining, and I need a cup of coffee.”

  She seemed hesitant, then nodded and said, “All right.”

  So we entered Giulio’s Ristorante.

  It was exactly as I remembered it, with a high tin ceiling, three paddle fans, a white ceramic tile floor, checkered tablecloths, and cheap prints of sunny Italy on the white plaster walls. The place wasn’t much to look at, but it was spotless, and it was authentic—a throwback to the Italian immigrant culture of the last century. Also, I recalled, the food was authentic Italian—not American Italian—so you had to be careful what you ordered, unless you liked trippa, for instance, which I found out the hard way is diced pig’s stomach, and the sheep’s head—capozella—is no treat either.

  Also authentic, I recalled, was the clientele, who were mostly locals from the shrinking Italian neighborhood, as well as recently arrived Italian immigrants, who were looking for real home cooking.

  And then there was another sort of clientele—gentlemen who wore expensive suits and pinky rings and who did not smile much. I remembered these men quite clearly from when I’d had lunch here with Frank. And I also recalled that Frank, who’d been a happy guy after I’d sprung him on bail, had put on his Mafioso face as soon as we walked in.

  Anyway, it was well after lunch now, but there was a smattering of older men at the tables having coffee, pastry, and conversation. I didn’t see anyone who might be friends of Anthony, or of Sally Da-da, and this was a good thing.

  A middle-aged waiter in an apron came over to us, smiled, and said, “Buon giorno.”

  Susan replied, “Buon giorno.”

  I said, “Good afternoon.” I added, in case he thought we were there to extort money, “Table, please.”

  “Yes, yes. You coma sitta here, nice a table by the window.”

  That was the table that Frank landed on when he came in through the window. That didn’t bother me, but I had another idea and pointed toward a rear table where the Bellarosas and the Sutters had had their last supper together. I said, “We’ll take that table.”

  “You wanna that table?”

  Susan explained, “We sat there a long time ago.”

  He shrugged, “Okay. Thasa nice a table, too.”

  So we sat at the nice a table, and we ordered cappuccino, a bottle of San Pellegrino water, and a plate of mixed pastry.

  The waiter took an immediate liking to Susan—they all do—and said to her, “I’m a gonna bringa you some beautiful dolce, and some nice a chocolate for you.”

  How about me?

  Susan said, “Grazie,” then said something else to him in Italian, and he smiled and replied. I think this is how she got into trouble the last time.

  Anyway, we sat there, with our backs to the wall, which is how I’d sat here with Frank at our post-courthouse lunch, and Susan and I held hands, and stared at nothing in particular.

  Finally, Susan said, “This is good.”

  I replied, “I wasn’t sure.”

  It did occur to me that we were in the belly of the beast, so to speak, though I didn’t really expect Anthony Bellarosa to walk through the door. Or the ghost of Frank Bellarosa for that matter. No, I felt we were chasing away the ghosts, and making new memories, rather than burying them, or letting them consume us.

  The cappuccino came, and the bottled water, and a huge plate of Italian pastry, along with a dish of chocolates—for Susan—and also a bottle of Sambuca and two liqueur glasses, which were in omaggio—on the house.

  We sat there, talking and drinking coffee, and eating too much pastry, and sipping Sambuca, killing the afternoon Italian-style. This was a lot less stressful than shopping, and more companionable than a museum. Good date.

  At about four o’clock, Susan said, “We should go so we can get ready for Edward and Carolyn.”

  I got the bill and overtipped the waiter, and we left Giulio’s, took a taxi back to our car, and began the drive home.

  Not a bad day, so far. I got rid of the Stanhopes and got rid of Frank Bellarosa’s ghost. Anthony next.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  I had decided to surprise Carolyn at the station, and I parked the Taurus near the taxi stand and waited for the 6:05 to pull in.

  I’d left the carbine home again, not thinking I’d get into a shoot-out with the Mafia in broad daylight at a crowded commuter station. And yet every time I left the rifle home, I was angry at myself for not having it with me. So, like Susan, I needed to face reality.

  The 6:05 blasted its whistle and came to a hissing stop at the station. The rush-hour train disgorged dozens of commuters onto the platform, and I had a flashback to my former life. Could I do this again?

  I got out of the car and scanned the passengers, then spotted Carolyn as she made her way toward the waiting taxis. I called out, “Hey, beautiful! Need a lift?”

  She was apparently used to this and kept walking, head and eyes straight ahead. Then she stopped in her tracks and turned in my direction.

  I waved, and she yelled, “Dad!” and hurried toward me.

  We hugged and kissed, and she said, “Dad, it’s so good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you, sweetheart.” I said, “You’re looking more beautiful than ever.”

  Carolyn ignores compliments, but she did smile and said, “This is so . . . I am so happy for you.”

  “Me, too.” She was carrying only a handbag and a lawyerly briefcase, so I asked her, “Where’s your luggage?”

  “Oh, I have a set of clothes at Mom’s.”

  “Good.” Exactly how much were they paying these ADAs in Brooklyn? Surely, my socially sensitive daughter wasn’t spending her annual trust fund distribution on clothes and baubles for herself.

  Anyway, we got in the car, and I noticed that she was wearing all black, which apparently was the new “in” non-color, suitable for work, after-work cocktails, weddings, and funerals.

  Also, incidentally, her hair is black, like my mother’s was before she went gray, and there had never been a hint of Susan’s red hair, so there was hope that Carolyn wasn’t cuckoo.

  I drove out of the small parking lot and noticed the expensive cars driven by wives who’d come to pick up their hardworking husbands. There were young children in some of the vehicles—the nanny left ea
rly today—and if I looked at these couples, I could see immediately which ones were happy to see each other, and which ones wished they’d taken another train ten or twenty years ago.

  I had no doubt that each couple had a story, but I didn’t think any of them could top mine and Susan’s.

  I drove through the village and headed toward Stanhope Hall.

  Carolyn asked me, “Are you happy, Dad?”

  “What man wouldn’t be happy about getting married?”

  Carolyn is not into my humor and asked again, “Are you happy?”

  I glanced at her and said, “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t happy to be here.”

  “I know.”

  I said to her, “Your mother, too, is very happy.”

  “I know that. We speak or e-mail twice a day.”

  Of course.

  To put the ball in her court, I said, “Well, I’m getting married for the second time, and you haven’t been married even once.”

  “Dad.”

  We chatted about her job and caught up on other subjects.

  Carolyn, as she did every summer, had spent a week in London in August, and this was our time together each year, except for when I came to New York for funerals, weddings, and business trips. So she said to me, “I guess I’m not visiting you in London this year.”

  I smiled and replied, “No. But your mother and I are going to London, maybe very soon, to move me out.” Carolyn likes London, so I asked, “Why don’t you come with us?”

  She replied, “I don’t think I can get away on short notice, but thanks.” Then she suggested, “Why don’t you keep your London flat?”

  I thought about that, and it wasn’t a bad idea, depending on future finances. But I wasn’t sure if Susan would be in favor of that. In any case, I might be using the flat myself if the Stanhopes got their daughter back. I said to my daughter, “That’s an idea.”

  As we approached Stanhope Hall, Carolyn asked me, “How are Grandpa and Grandma?”

  “They’re wonderful.”

  “I got your e-mail.”

  “Good.”

  “So? How are you getting along with them?”

  “Not bad, actually.”

  “Are they happy for you and Mom?”