The Gate House by Nelson DeMille Read Free Book Online

hinted to me that his brother-in-law, Mr. D’Alessio, was not happy with me. I wondered if Uncle Sal was still annoyed. Or maybe, since my wife killed Frank afterwards, all was forgiven. Maybe I should ask Anthony to ask his uncle about that. Maybe not.
    “Mr. Sutter? You saved his life.”
    I replied, “I did what anyone who was trained in first aid would have done.” I added, “You don’t owe me anything.”
    “It would make me feel good if I could return that favor.”
    I clearly recalled Frank’s favors to me, which were not helpful, and I was certain that Anthony’s favors also came with a few strings attached. So, to nip this in the bud, and make myself perfectly clear, I said, “As it turned out, all I did was save your father’s life so my wife could kill him later.”
    This sort of caught Anthony by surprise; he probably thought I wasn’t going to bring up the actual cause of his father’s death. I mean, Frank Bellarosa did not die from natural causes, unless getting shot by a pissed-off girlfriend was a natural cause in his universe.
    To make my point more clear, I said, “Your father was fucking my wife. But I guess you know that.”
    He didn’t reply for a few seconds, then said, “Yeah . . . I mean, it was in the papers.”
    “And do you know that she’s back?”
    “Yeah. I know.”
    “How do you feel about that?”
    He looked me right in the eye and replied, “I think she should have stayed away.”
    “Me, too. But she didn’t.” We locked eyeballs and I said to him, “I assume there will not be a problem, Anthony.”
    He held eye contact and said, “If we were going to have that kind of problem, Mr. Sutter, it wouldn’t matter if she was living on the moon. Capisce?”
    I was sure now that I was speaking to the young don, and I said, “
That
is the favor you can do for me.”
    He thought a moment, then said, “I don’t know what happened between them, but it was personal. So, when it’s personal between a man and a woman, then . . . we let it go.” He added, “There’s no problem.”
    I recalled that when Frank Bellarosa said there was no problem, there was a problem. But I let it go for now, making a mental note to follow up with Anthony Bellarosa on the subject of not whacking my ex-wife. I mean, she hadn’t done
me
any favors lately, but as I said, she’s the mother of my children. I would point this out to Anthony, but then he’d remind me that Susan had left him without a father. It’s incredible, if you think about it, how much trouble is caused by putting Tab A into Slot B.
    In any case, I’d really had enough strolling down memory lane, and I’d made my point, so I stood and said, “Thanks for stopping by.”
    He stood also, and we moved into the foyer. I put my hand on the doorknob, but he stood away from the door. He asked me, “You seen your wife yet?”
    “My ex-wife. No, I have not.”
    “Well, you will. You can tell her everything’s okay.”
    I didn’t reply, but I thought that Susan Stanhope Sutter had probably not given a single thought to the fact that she’d moved back into the neighborhood where she murdered a Mafia don. And by now, she must have heard that Anthony lived on the old Alhambra estate. Maybe she planned to pay a belated condolence call on Anthony since she hadn’t attended her lover’s funeral. I’m not being entirely facetious; Susan has this upper-class belief that just because you shoot a man, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be polite to his friends and family.
    Anthony suggested, “Maybe we can go to dinner some night.”
    “Who?”
    “Us.”
    “Why?”
    “Like, just to talk.”
    “About?”
    “My father. He really respected you.”
    I wasn’t sure I felt the same about don Bellarosa. I mean, he wasn’t pure evil. In fact, he was a good husband and good father, except for the extramarital affairs and getting his youngest son into organized crime. And he could be a good friend, except for the lying and manipulating,