And that reminded me of the press. They were undoubtedly on the way, and I didn't want to meet the press and be asked a lot of silly questions like, "Did you see the faces of the men who shot Frank Bellarosa?" and so forth. I might have hung around if I thought Jenny Alvarez was on the way, but it was past midnight on a Friday, and she was probably home with a good book by now. Anyway, I said to a detective type, "Get me out of here."
"Okay. Let's go."
"One minute." Still holding my towel, I went to Anna, who was standing, but was being supported by three cops. I said to her, "He's going to be all right. I promise."
She looked at me as though she didn't recognize me, and in fact, her eyes were swollen nearly shut and blinded by tears. But then she put her hand out and touched my cheek. Her voice was very small. "John… oh, John…" "I'll try to see you later at the hospital."
I moved away from Anna and walked over to where Susan was still sitting in the same chair. I said to her, "The police will take you home. I have to go with them to the station."
She nodded.
I said, "He may make it."
Again she nodded.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
I had the impression again that she was annoyed at something. I mean, this was terribly inconvenient and all. I said, "Okay. I'll see you later." "John?"
"Yes?"
"Did you save his life? Is that what you were doing there?"
"I suppose that's what I was trying to do. Yes."
"Why?"
"He owes me money."
She said, "Well, I wouldn't have done it if I were you." Interesting. I said, "I'll see you at home." I turned and walked toward the detective who was waiting for me. I heard Susan call out, "John." I turned and she smiled at me, then puckered those pouty lips in a kiss.
Madonn', she was nuts. But how sane was I to still love her? I followed the detective out onto the sidewalk where dozens of cops had cleared and barricaded a block of Mott Street. Police cars with revolving lights cast red and blue beams on the buildings, and it was a different block than it had been only a short time ago. The detective said to me, "That your wife?" "Yes."
"Nice-looking lady."
"Thank you."
We walked toward an unmarked car and he asked me, "Aren't you the lawyer?
Sutter? Bellarosa's lawyer?"
"Right."
"Maybe that's why they didn't take you out, too. They don't do lawyers."
"Lucky me."
He opened the passenger-side door for me and said, "You ruined your suit, Mr Sutter."
"It's an old one." Though the tie was new.
So I spent the next few hours at Midtown south with two detectives, describing the events that had taken about ten minutes to happen. I really was being cooperative, though as an attorney, and especially as the victim's attorney, I could have blown them off and left anytime. In fact, when they started asking questions about who I thought had done the deed, I told them to stick to factual questions. One of the detectives, however, kept asking me about Sally Da-da, and I told him to go ask Sally Da-da about Sally Da-da. But Mr Da-da was in Florida as it turned out. How convenient.
So we went round and round, and this one detective, the bad-cop half of the team, asked me, "Why'd you save his life?"
"He owes me money."
The good cop said, "He owes you his life. Collect on that."
"How's he doing?"
Good cop replied, "Still alive."
I told them the joke about the Mafia guy who tried to blow up a police car, but they seemed sort of weary and barely chuckled. I was getting very yawny myself, but they kept pressing coffee on me.
Midtown South is not an ordinary station house, but is sort of like headquarters for that part of Manhattan, and the joint was bustling with detectives on the second floor where I was. There was also a big room on the second floor where they kept mug-shot books, and I sat in there for about an hour with a detective who was passing me these books labelled "Wiseguys", which I thought was funny. Well, I looked at more Italian faces in that hour than I see in Lattingtown in ten years, but I didn't recognize any of the photos as either of the two sportsmen with the shotguns. I remembered a phrase I heard in an old gangster movie once, and I said, "Maybe they used outside talent. You know, a few boys blew in from Chicago. Check the train stations."
"Train stations?"
"Well, maybe the airports."
Anyway, we went from mug shots to a slide show of a few dozen paesanos caught by the candid camera in their natural habitats. The detective explained, "These men have never been arrested, so we don't have mug shots, but they're all wiseguys." So I looked at the slide screen until my eyes were about gone and I was yawning and my head ached. A detective said, "We really appreciate your cooperation." "No problem." But was I really going to finger the two gunmen if I saw their faces? Did I want to be a witness in a mob murder trial? No, I didn't, but I would. Beyond all the bullshit of the last several months, I was still a good citizen, and had I seen the faces of either of those two men, I would have said, "Stop! That's one of them." But so far, no one looked familiar. But then I started to see familiar faces and I blinked. The slides I was looking at now were unmistakably those shot from the DePauw residence with Alhambra in the background. It was, in fact, the Easter Sunday rotogravure, and the enlarged, grainy slides showed a lot of people in their Easter finery getting out of big black cars. I said, "Hey, I remember that day." And there was Sally Da-da with a woman who could well have been Anna's sister, and there was Fat Paulie with a woman who could have been his brother, and there were faces I recognized from Giulio's and from the Plaza Hotel, But none of those faces were the ones I had seen aiming down the barrels of those big cannons. Then the screen flashed to a night view of Alhambra, and there was wiseass John Sutter waving to the camera with pretty Susan in her red dress beside me, giving me a look of puzzled impatience. I said, "That's the guy! I'll never forget that face."
The two detectives chuckled. One of them said, "Looks like a killer."
"Beady eyes," agreed the other.
Well, the slide show ended, and to be honest, I couldn't identify the two men, but I said, "Look, I'm willing to do this all over again, but not tonight." "It's best to do it while it's still fresh in your mind, sir."
"It's too fresh. All I can see now is four black muzzles."
"We understand."
"Good. Well, good night."
But not quite. I spent another few hours with a police sketch artist, a pretty woman, which made the thing sort of tolerable. I was very tempted to describe to her the features of Alphonse Ferragamo, but cops take this sort of thing seriously, and I guess I do, too. So I tried to re-create in words what two goombahs looked like on a dimly lit street, crouched behind a car with shotguns partially blocking their faces. Linda – that was the artist's name – gave me a book of sketches of eyes and mouths and all that, and it was sort of fun, like a mix-and-match game, and we sat shoulder to shoulder hunched over the sketch pad. She wore a nice perfume, which she said was Obsession. As for me, my deodorant had quit, and the little splatters of mortality on my clothes were getting ripe. Anyway, she produced two sketches that, with some alterations, looked like the boys with the guns. But by this time, I was so punchy I literally couldn't see straight. Linda said, "You were very observant considering the circumstances. Most people blank, you know, sort of like a hysterical blindness, and they can't even tell you if the guy was black or white."
"Thank you. Did I mention that the guy on the right had a tiny zit on his jaw?" She smiled. "Is that so?" She took a fresh pad and said, "Sit still," then did a quick charcoal sketch of me, which was a little embarrassing. She ripped off the sheet and slid it across the table. I picked it up and studied it for a moment. The woman had obviously been drawing felons too long, because the guy in the sketch looked like a bad dude. I said, "I need some sleep." Well, it was approaching dawn, and again I figured I was through for the night, but who should show up at Midtown South but Mr Felix Mancuso of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I asked him, "Slumming?"