Gold Coast

And on and on she went, as if we were married or something. "Mr Sutter," she said very snottily, "Mr Ferragamo has five witnesses who put Frank Bellarosa at the scene of the murder. Are you saying they're all liars? Or are you the liar?" It must have been the heat, and I guess my own state of mind, or maybe that woman's tone of voice finally got to me. Anyway, I snapped back, "Ferragamo's witnesses are liars, and he knows they are liars. This whole thing is a frame-up, a personal vendetta against my client, and an attempt to start trouble between-" I got my mouth under control, then glanced at Bellarosa, who touched his index finger to his lips.

"Trouble between who? Rival mobs?"

Someone else, a Mafia groupie or something, asked, "Trouble with his own mob?

Trouble with his underboss? With Sally Da-da?"

Mafia politics were not my strong point, but obviously the initiated knew all sorts of underworld gossip and they thought I did, too. "Trouble with who?" asked someone else. "With the Colombian drug kings? With Juan Carranza's friends?"

"Is it true that the Mafia is trying to push out the Colombians?" "Mr Sutter, did you say in court that Alphonse Ferragamo ordered people to run you off the road?"

I thought someone already asked that question.

"Mr Sutter, are you saying that the U.S. Attorney is framing your client?" Mr Sutter, blah, blah, blah. I had this image of the television set over the bar at The Creek. I wonder if people really do look heavier on TV. I hope not. I could hear my pals now. "Look at him." "He's getting fat." "He's sweating like a pig." "His tie is crooked." "How much is he getting paid for that?" "His father must be rolling over in his grave." My father is actually alive and well in Europe.

Finally, the two cops, with Vi

Bellarosa said to the two cops, "Thanks, boys. I owe you one." Meanwhile, I can't even get a cop to interpret complex and contradictory parking signs for me. But that was yesterday. Today, the cop near the open car door touched his cap as I slid in beside the don. What a screwy country. Vi

We passed my office building, the J. P. Morgan Building at 23 Wall Street, and though I was still supposed to work there, I felt a sudden nostalgia for the old place.

We drove around for a while, no one saying much, except that Vi

Bellarosa said very little in return, but at one point he leaned over to me.

"You did real good, Counsellor. Right up until the end there."

I didn't reply.

He continued, "You got to be careful what you say to the press. They twist things around."

I nodded.

He went on, "The press ain't lookin' for facts. They think they are, but they want a good story. Sometimes a good story has no facts. Sometimes it's fu

"Capisco."

"Yeah. You did fine with that lady judge. Alphonse fucked himself up. He talks too much. Every time he opens his mouth, somebody wants to put their fist in it. He's pissed off now, but he's go

"Frank, if you don't like the way-"

He patted my knee. "Hey, you did okay. Just a few points I gotta make so you know. Okay? Hey, I walked. Right?"

"Right."

We kept driving around lower Manhattan. Frank ordered Le

I had some paperwork with me relating to the bail: the receipt for five million dollars, the bail forfeiture warning, and other printed matter that I looked over. I also had the arrest warrant now, and the charge sheet, which I now read. Most important, I had a copy of the indictment, which ran to about eighty pages. I wanted to read it at my leisure, but for now, I perused it, discovering that, indeed, all the evidence against Frank Bellarosa was in the form of five witness statements. There was no physical evidence putting him at the scene of the crime, and all the witnesses had Hispanic names.

I had never asked Bellarosa about the actual murder, and I only vaguely remembered the press accounts of it. But from what I could glean from the witness statements, Juan Carranza, driving his own car, a Corvette, left the Garden State Parkway at about noon on January fourteenth, at the Red Bank exit. With him was his girlfriend, Ramona Velarde. A car in front of the Corvette came to a stop on the single-lane exit ramp, and Carranza was forced to stop also. Two men then exited the car behind Carranza, walked right up to his car, and one of them fired a single bullet through his side window, striking Carranza in the face. The assassin then tried the driver's door, and finding it unlocked, he opened it and fired the remaining four bullets from the revolver into Carranza's head. The girlfriend was untouched. The assassin then threw the revolver on the girlfriend's lap, and he and his companion got into the front car that had blocked the exit ramp, abandoning their car behind Carranza's. The witnesses to this assassination were Ramona Velarde and four men who were in a car behind the car from which the assassins exited. Each of the four male witnesses stated frankly that they were Juan Carranza's bodyguards. I noted that none of them said they fired at the men who had bumped off their boss. In fact, they stated that they put Ramona Velarde in their car and jumped the curb onto the grass, driving around the assassins' abandoned car and the Corvette, but they made no attempt to pursue the assassins. The subtext here was that they recognized that their boss had been hit by the Italian mob, and they didn't want to be dead heroes. The New Jersey State Police determined that this rubout had federal drug and racketeering implications and contacted the FBI. Through an anonymous tip, Ramona Velarde was picked up, and she subsequently identified the four bodyguards, who were all picked up or surrendered within a few weeks. All of them agreed to become federal witnesses.

The issue of identification seemed to me a little vague. Ramona Velarde was only a few feet from the assassin, but I don't see how she could have seen his face if he was standing beside a low-slung Corvette. All she could have seen was the hand and the gun. Similarly, the assassin and his partner would have exited their car with their backs to the four bodyguards, who had let that car come between them and their boss. However, all four men stated that the assassin and his partner glanced back at them a few times as the two men stepped up to Carranza's Corvette. All four of the men said they recognized the face of Frank Bellarosa. Ramona Velarde picked Bellarosa's photo out of mug shots. Well, as I read this interesting account of gangland murder, it did certainly sound like a mob hit, Italian style. I mean, it was classical Mafia: the boxed-in automobile, the girlfriend left untouched, even the bodyguards left alone so that the hit didn't become a massacre, which would draw all sorts of unwanted negative press. And the abandoned car was stolen, of course, and also Italian style, the murder weapon was left behind and was clean as a whistle. The amateurs liked to use the same gun over and over again until somebody got caught with it, and ballistics showed it had about a dozen murders on it. The Italians bought clean guns, used them once, and dumped them immediately at the scene before strolling off.