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and poured brandy into each. “Neat?”
    “A little water.”
    She turned on the faucet, splashed too much water in the brandy, and handed me the glass. We touched glasses and drank there in the pantry, then moved into the kitchen. She asked, “Is there a Mrs. Bellarosa?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well, was Mr. Bellarosa wearing a wedding ring?”
    “I don’t notice things like that.”
    “You do when it’s an attractive woman.”
    “Nonsense.’’ But true. If a woman is attractive and I’m in one of my frisky moods, I don’t care if she’s single, engaged, married, pregnant, divorced, or on her honeymoon. Maybe that’s because I never go past the flirting stage. Physically, I’m very loyal. Susan, on the other hand, is not a flirt, and you have to keep an eye on women like that.
    She sat at the big round table in our English country-style kitchen.
    I opened the refrigerator.
    She said, “We’re having dinner with the Remsens at the club.”
    “What time?”
    “Three.”
    “I’ll have an apple.”
    “I fed them to the horses.”
    “I’ll have some oats.’’ I found a bowl of New Zealand cherries and closed the refrigerator door. I ate the cherries standing, spitting the pits into the sink, and drank the brandy. Fresh cherries with brandy are good.
    Neither of us spoke for a while, and the regulator clock on the wall was tick-tocking. Finally, I said, “Look, Susan, if this guy was an Iranian rug merchant or a Korean importer or whatever, I would be a good neighbor. And if anyone around here didn’t like that, the hell with them. But Mr. Frank Bellarosa is a gangster and, according to the papers, the top Mafia boss in New York. I am an attorney, not to mention a respected member of this community. Bellarosa’s phones are tapped, and his house is watched. I must be very careful of any relationship with that man.”
    Susan replied, “I understand your position, Mr. Sutter. Some people even consider the Stanhopes as respected members of the community.”
    “Don’t be sarcastic, Susan. I’m speaking as an attorney, not as a snob. I make about half my living from the people around here, and I have a reputation for honesty and integrity. I want you to promise me you won’t go over there to call on him or his wife, if he has one.”
    “All right, but remember what Tolkien said.”
    “What did Tolkien say?”
    “Tolkien said, ‘It doesn’t do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near him.’”
    Indeed it does not do at all, which was why I was trying to factor in Mr. Frank Bellarosa.

 
     
    Five
    Dinner at The Creek Club with the Remsens, Lester and Judy, began well enough. The conversation was mostly about important social issues (a new resident whose property bordered our club had brought suit over the skeet shooting, which he claimed was terrorizing his children and dog), about important world issues (the PGA was going to be held in Southampton again this May), and about pressing ecological issues, to wit: The remaining land of the old Guthrie estate, some one hundred acres, had gone to the developers, who wanted a variance to put up twenty houses in the two-million-dollar price range. “Outrageous,’’ proclaimed Lester Remsen, who like myself is no millionaire, but who does own a very nice converted carriage house and ten acres of the former Guthrie estate. “Outrageous and ecologically unsound,’’ Lester added.
    The Guthrie estate was once a three-hundred-acre tract of terraced splendor, and the main house was called Meudon, an eighty-room replica of the Meudon Palace outside Paris. The Guthrie family tore down the palace in the 1950s rather than pay taxes on it as developed property.
    Some of the locals considered the tearing down of Meudon Palace a sacrilege, while others considered it poetic justice, because the original Guthrie, William D., an aide to the Rockefeller clan, had purchased and torn down the village of Lattingtown—sixty homes and