Chapter 32: Papa's Chair

On Monday I went to the table by water again.

I tied the Assunta behind the old brick restaurant on the Kill, where Cosimo's white boat had been tied last August.

There was nothing at that cleat now but a gull.

Ettore came up the dock steps behind me in his dark suit, the collar open.

He'd worn it that way in the back row of a cathedral once, with a crossword on his knee.

He didn't walk beside me.

He walked one step behind, on my left.

I noticed.

So did everybody in the kitchen as we came through it.

A cook in a white apron held the back door open for me and said, "Captain."

The back room was the same.

But there were six chairs now.

The five families' chairs down the two sides.

And one more at the end, under the window, where nobody had ever sat because there had never been anybody to sit there.

The Bay Ridge boss was already in his.

The old man from Howard Beach was in his, with his cane against the table.

His daughter sat against the wall behind him, where she could see.

In the Varrone chair sat an old man from Bath Avenue I'd known all my life by sight.

He was a Varrone captain who'd buried a brother in the war after Papa.

The Varrones had taken nine months to choose him.

He'd sent word through the young man from the Todt Hill gate, his neighbor on Bath Avenue.

He'd never sat at a table with a woman, he said, and he hoped she'd be patient with him.

He stood up when I came in.

So did the others.

I hadn't expected that.

Ettore went to the Sarno chair and stood behind it until I'd sat.

Papa's chair, the Cardone chair, stood empty halfway down the side.

I looked at it.

Then I walked past it and sat at the head of the table, under the window.

My father's watch slid down my wrist when I put my hands on the wood.

"Who sits for the Cardones?" the Bay Ridge boss said.

"The Cardones haven't decided yet," I said. "When they do, I'll tell you."

He nodded slowly.

"Then let's begin," the old man from Howard Beach said, and lifted one finger at me. "Captain."

It took two hours.

The Varrone money to the Sarnos, paid in full on Friday.

The widows' fund, paid in full by Christmas, with Assunta's ledger in front of every family.

The Bay Ridge boss's son, due home from federal prison in the fall, and every chair at the table writing a letter.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Don Married My Pregnant Sister So I Choose His Mafia Rival from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.