Chapter 13: Which Hospital

"I didn't touch her," I said. "I was never near that church."

"She's in the back of my car right now, Talia. She can't stop shaking."

"Then take her to a hospital."

"She says she's been." The wind roared behind him. "The captains want you at the house tomorrow. Ten o'clock."

"I'm banned from your house."

"You're summoned to it," he said, and hung up.

I set the phone down on the counter very carefully.

Gianni had stopped stacking chairs.

He had one in each hand and he didn't put them down.

"She was at Saint Anselm's," I said. "At the same time I was on the pier with thirty people."

"Then thirty people say so."

"Thirty people who work for me."

He set the chairs down at last.

"Then you take one who doesn't."

My mother came down the stairs in her robe, because she had heard my voice change through the floor.

I told her.

She sat down on the bottom step and crossed herself.

Then she got up and put the kettle on, because that was what her hands knew how to do.

At nine forty-five the next morning Gianni drove me over the Verrazzano.

The bridge was gray and the water under it was gray.

I wore my navy coat and my father's cross and no ring.

"I come in this time," Gianni said at the bottom of the drive.

"You come in this time."

The soldier at the door let us both pass without a word.

They had set up the living room like a courtroom.

Six captains sat on the long couches with their coffee cups balanced on their knees.

The consigliere stood by the fireplace.

Renzo stood at the window with his back to all of it.

Cordelia sat in the middle of the rug in a wheelchair.

She had a cashmere blanket over her legs and no makeup on.

Her bob was pulled back with a plain clip, and her eyes were swollen and pink.

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