Chapter 11: The Table

The Table was a slab of black walnut in the back room of the banquet hall, long enough for twenty men.

Twelve capos sat along it, in dark suits, with their hands folded.

Cesare sat at the head.

Bianca sat at his right in gray silk, with the crown on and her hand resting lightly on her stomach.

I stood alone at the foot.

Ruggero was supposed to stand beside me.

He had not arrived, and I had told myself the traffic was bad.

"The Table is called," Cesare said. "The question is whether the woman who left this house twelve years ago has any claim on it."

He nodded to Bianca.

She rose, gracious and sorrowful, and went around the room with a manila folder.

"I take no pleasure in this," she said. "I loved her. I only raised her boys."

She laid out her evidence on the walnut one piece at a time.

The note, in its brown folds, with Cesare's name on it.

A photograph of Ruggero and me in the doorway of the coat room, printed large, with his hand in my hair.

A hotel receipt from twelve years ago, for a room in Newark, in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Lombardi.

"It's a forgery," I said.

"Is it?" Bianca asked gently. "Which part?"

"The note. The receipt. All of it."

"Adriana, honey. There's a photograph."

A capo on the left chuckled.

I saw the others shift and look away, and I knew how it looked.

In it, a woman my age, in a green dress, has her hands in Ruggero's collar.

I had no folder.

I had no lawyer, no priest, no phone with a dead man's voice on it.

All I had was a gray coat in a closet and a ring in my pocket.

"The photograph is true," I said.

The room went still.

"I kissed him. Two nights ago. I'm forty-seven and I did it with my eyes open, and it has nothing to do with what happened twelve years ago."