After He Watched Me Drown, I Built My Empire novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Table

On Friday noon the long table in the Albany house had eight chairs and forty people standing behind them.

The old Don was carried in on a wheeled chair, gray as the tablecloth, with an oxygen line under his nose.

Nobody spoke while they set him at the head.

I sat in the oak chair with the truss arms and put my father's folder in front of me.

Behind me, along the wall of the dining room, stood the whole patrol crew in their salt-stained jackets.

I had not asked them to come.

They had come in on the six o'clock ferry and lined up without a word.

The deckhand with the gray beard had nodded to me when I passed.

Remo stood at the end of the line.

He had left his badge on his jacket.

The Delmonte Don sat across from me in a good suit, with Fiora behind his shoulder in black.

Cesare stood by the east door.

He was not allowed a chair.

"We have one motion," the Delmonte Don said pleasantly. "The Lake George docks and their patrol move to Delmonte control, for the safety of the Family. I'm told the present arrangement has led to accidents."

Someone near the foot of the table laughed.

"Seven votes carry it," he said. "I have six, and Ignazio's seat is empty while he is ill. I believe the Arcuri chair is permitted to speak before the count."

"I'm permitted," I said.

I stood.

My knees were steady, which surprised me.

"Before the vote, I'd like the table to read something," I said. "It's my father's."

I opened the folder.

I read the table the page he had written the night before he died, in his square engineer's capitals, line by line.

When I reached the four bolts cut halfway through and filled with grease, nobody in the room was looking at anyone but me.

"A dead man's pencil," the Delmonte Don said. "It proves nothing."

"It proves a cut," I said. "It doesn't prove who. For that I need a witness."

I looked down the wall at Remo.

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