Chapter 22: The Founders' Dinner

The ballroom at Gallo's held twenty round tables and two hundred guests.

Forty men in white aprons stood along the walls, and none of them carried plates.

Their hands were folded in front of them.

The caterers' trays sat untouched on the sideboards, the veal going cold.

I wore the green dress.

Cesare had asked me to, without saying why, and I hadn't asked.

He sat at the head table in a black suit with Agnese on his right and me on his left.

Gaspare sat three seats down, and he hadn't touched his wine.

A phone with a recording on it lay under my napkin.

It was the same place I had hidden the first one, nearly three weeks before.

Across the room, Tommaso rose.

The two hundred guests fell silent.

Every old man at every table turned his head toward him.

He was in a midnight-blue suit.

He raised his glass and smiled at the room.

"*Amici miei,*" said Tommaso Gallo.

My friends.

He spoke for ten minutes, in the old language, in that warm voice.

I stood behind my chair once, then sat again, listening.

I caught *Salvatore*, and *famiglia*, and *il porto*, and a word I now knew, *stanco*, tired.

He was telling two hundred men from Palermo and Brooklyn and Philadelphia that the Don was tired.

That a young man shouldn't carry a port and a family alone.

That the council would carry it for him.

Forever.

Heads nodded.

An old man with a cane near the front wiped his eyes.

He said something soft to the man next to him.

Tommaso lifted the paper in his hand.

"*Chi è d'accordo?*" he asked.

Who agrees?

A few hands rose.

Then more.

Cesare's fingers closed on mine under the tablecloth.

I squeezed twice.

Then I let go and stood up.

The sound of my chair was the loudest thing I'd ever heard.

Two hundred heads turned.

Tommaso's smile didn't move, but his eyes did.

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