Chapter 4: The Third Berth

On Friday a tailor's van came to the house, and I put on a charcoal suit that fit better than anything I had ever owned.

I didn't ask how Federico knew my size.

The meeting was in the long library on the ground floor, with a table that could seat twenty.

Nine Orsini capos sat on one side with their hands flat on the wood.

Federico took the head of the table.

The card on the chair beside his said Mrs. Orsini, in ink.

I sat in it.

Murmurs ran down the table, and one of the older capos looked at Federico and plainly wanted an explanation.

Then the Ruggeri party came in.

Valentina wore pale blue and her hair loose, and she carried a leather tube of drawings against her chest.

Dario walked at her shoulder in a black suit, one hand at the small of her back.

He saw me and stopped in the doorway.

Valentina didn't stop.

Her eyes went to me for half a second, wide and wet, and then she smiled at the room.

"Thank you for seeing us," she said. "My father sends his regards."

She unrolled the drawings, and they were mine.

The loading lanes, the crane pads, the drainage cut, all of it clean on fresh paper, with a new title block in the corner that read V. Ruggeri.

She talked her way through all forty pages.

She used my words, and she used them well.

She had practiced, and in places she even sounded like me.

Dario never took his eyes off my face.

When she finished, the capos nodded, and one of them said, "Very thorough."

"Thank you," Valentina said, and touched her chest.

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