Nelson DeMille - The Gate House

“Just wondering.”

“Yeah. I loved that place.” He informed me, “I went skinny-dipping once in the pool.” He smiled. “With the college girl who my father hired to be my tutor.”

“What subject?”

He laughed, then seemed lost in that memory, so I took the opportunity to think about how to get the hell out of here. I also looked around to see if there was anyone in Wong Lee’s whom I knew. Or anyone who looked like the FBI.

The restaurant was mostly empty, except for a few families with kids, and people waiting for takeout orders. Then I noticed a guy sitting by himself in a booth on the other side, facing toward the back of the restaurant.

Anthony noticed my interest in the gentleman and said, “He’s with me.”

“Good.” So we had interlocking fields of fire if a situation developed. That made me feel much better. More to the point, Mr. Bellarosa was definitely in full security mode. I looked back at him, and it appeared to me now that under his loose-fitting Hawaiian shirt was quite possibly a Kevlar vest. This is what had saved his father’s life at Giulio’s. Maybe I should ask if he had an extra vest.

If I wanted to speculate on what or who was making Anthony jumpy, I’d guess it was Sally Da-da. Though why this should be happening now, after ten years, was a mystery. So maybe it was someone else. The only way I’d know for sure is if the same two guys with shotguns who were at Giulio’s suddenly appeared at the table and blew Anthony’s head off. Maybe I should order takeout.

The waitress brought the menus, and we looked at them. He asked me, “You like Chinese?”

“Sometimes.”

“I dated a Chinese girl once, and an hour after I ate her, I was hungry again.” He laughed. “Get it?”

“Got it.” I studied the menu more intensely and took a long swig of Scotch.

He continued, “So I was dating this Chinese girl, and one night, we’re making out hot and heavy, and I said to her, ‘I want sixty-nine,’ and she says, ‘Oh, you want beef and broccoli now ?’” He laughed again. “Get it?”

“Got it.”

“You got one?”

“Not one that comes to mind.”

“I once heard my father say to somebody that you were a funny guy.”

In fact, Frank appreciated my sarcasm, irony, and humor, even when he was the butt of it. I wasn’t sure that his son was as thick-skinned or as bright, but the jury was still out on Anthony’s brain power. I said, “Your father brought out the best of my wit.”

The waitress returned, and I ordered wonton soup and beef and broccoli, which made Anthony laugh. He ordered sixty-nine, which was not on the menu, and settled for what I was having. He also ordered another round of Scotch, and a clean ashtray, and I asked for chopsticks.

He said to me, “You know why wives like Chinese food?”

“No. Why?”

“Because wonton spelled backwards is not now.”

I hoped that exhausted his repertoire.

I noticed that Anthony, like Tony, had a flag pin on the lapel of his sports jacket, and my recollection of Frank and his friends was that they exhibited a sort of primitive, jingoistic patriotism, based for the most part on xenophobia, racism, and a lingering immigrant culture that said, “America is a great country.”

Indeed it is, and despite some serious problems, I was seeing it more clearly now after three years of wandering the globe, and seven years in London. I mean, England was a good place for self-exiled Americans, but it wasn’t home, and I suddenly realized that I was home. So maybe I should stop playing the part of the ex-pat on a brief visit to the States.

As though reading my mind, Anthony asked me, “So, how long you staying?”

This, I guess, was the threshold question whose answer would determine if we had any business to discuss. So I needed to carefully consider my answer.

He asked me, “You still up in the air on that?”

“I’m… leaning toward staying.”

“Good. No reason to go back.” He added, “This is where the action is.”

Actually, that was a good reason to return to London.

Anthony suddenly reached into his pocket, and I thought he was pulling his gun, but instead he produced a flag pin and set it down in front of me. He said, “If you’re staying, you want to wear this.”

I left it lying on the table and said, “Thank you.”

Anthony instructed, “Put it on your lapel.” He tapped the flag on his lapel, but when I didn’t follow instructions, he leaned forward and stuck the flag on the left lapel of my blue blazer. He said, “There you go. Now you’re an American again.”

I informed him, “My family has been in America for over three hundred years.”

“No shit?” He inquired, “Why’d they wait so long after Columbus discovered America?”

Further on the subject of history, Anthony informed me, “I majored in history.” He added, “I went to college for a year. NYU. I fucked my brains out.”

I could see that.

“I read a lot about the Romans. That shit interests me. How about you?”

I informed him, “I took eight years of Latin, and I could read Cicero, Seneca, and Ovid in classical Latin.”

“No shit?”

“Then, in my senior year of college, I got hit in the head with a baseball, and now I can read only Italian.”

He thought that was funny, then got serious and said, “What I’m getting at is I see this country like Rome, when the Empire was in serious trouble. Understand?”

I didn’t reply.

“Like, the days of the Republic are over. Now we’re like an imperial power, so every asshole out there wants to take a shot at us. Right? Like those fucks on 9/11. Plus, we can’t control our borders, like the Romans couldn’t, so we got ten million illegals who can’t even speak the fucking language and don’t give a shit about the country. They just want a piece of the action. And the assholes in Washington sit around and argue, like the Roman Senate, and the fucking country is going to hell with weirdos screaming about their rights, and the fucking barbarians are at the border.”

“What book was that in?”

He ignored me and continued his riff. “The fucking bureaucrats are up our asses, the men in this country act like women, and the women act like men, and all anyone cares about is bread and circuses. You see what I’m saying?”

“I know the argument, Anthony.” I gave him some good news and said, “At least organized crime is almost eradicated.”

He stubbed out his cigarette, then said, “You think?”

Anthony was a perfect example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. Regarding the purpose of this dinner, I asked him, “So, what would you like to know about your father?”

He lit another cigarette, sat back, then said, “I just want you to tell me… like, how you met. Why you decided to do business. I mean… why would a guy like you… you know, get involved in a criminal case?”

“You mean organized crime?”

He wasn’t about to go there. I mean, like, you know, there is no Mafia. No Cosa Nostra. Whaddaya talkin’ about?

Anthony reminded me, “You defended him on a murder charge, which, as you know, Counselor, was bullshit.” He asked me again, “So, how did you and my father get together and wind up doing business?”

I replied, “It was mostly a personal relationship.” I added, “We clicked, and he needed some help.”

“Yeah? But why did you stick your neck out?”

Anthony was testing the water to see what motivated me – why I hooked up with the mob, so to speak, and what it would take for me to do it again. In his world, the answer was money and power, but maybe he understood that in my world, it was more complex.

I replied, “I told you the other night – he did me a favor and I was repaying the favor.” Also, the whole truth was that Frank Bellarosa, in cahoots with my wife, played the macho card, i.e., Frank had a gun and a set of balls, and nice guy John had a pen and a good intellect. They were very subtle about that, of course, but this challenge to my manhood worked well. Plus, I was bored, and Susan knew that. What she didn’t know was that Frank Bellarosa also appealed to my darker side; evil is very seductive, which Susan discovered too late.